$ 


^ 


The  End  of  a  Chapter 
* 


The  End  of  a  Chapter 


By 

Shane  Leslie 

M.  A.  Cambridge 


New  York 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons 
1919 


COPTHIGHT,  1916,  BT 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published  April,  1916 

Reprinted  October,  1916 

January,  1917,  April,  1917 

March,  1919 


Preface 

IT  was  while  invalided  in  hospital  during  the  Great 
War  that  I  began  to  record  notes  and  souvenirs  of  the 
times  and  institutions  under  which  I  had  lived,  realis- 
ing that  I  had  witnessed  the  suicide  of  the  civilisation 
called  Christian  and  the  travail  of  a  new  era  to  which 
no  gods  have  been  as  yet  rash  enough  to  give  their 
name,  and  remembering  that,  with  my  friends  and  con- 
temporaries, I  shared  the  fortunes  and  misfortunes  of 
being  born  at  the  end  of  a  chapter  in  history. 

To  the  memory  of  those  of  them  who  have  died  be- 
fore the  next  chapter  has  begun  I  dedicate  this  book, 
and  especially  to  that  of  my  brother,  Captain  Norman 
Leslie,  whom  I  buried  at  Armentieres  in  France,  between 
the  guns  of  two  armies. 


2057946 


Contents 

PAQB 

LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST  .....  3 
ETON  COLLEGE  .....*  26 
THE  DYNASTY  OF  HANOVER  .  .  .  .47 

CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY  .....  67 
THE  RELIGION  OF  ENGLAND  .  .  .  .92 

THE  POLITICIANS 110 

IRELAND  AND  THE  IRISH  ....      133 

AN  EMPIRE  OF  SPORT  AND  FREEDOM    .  .  .151 

SOCIETY  IN  DECAY          .....      171 

PoST-VlCTORIANISM  .....         187 

EPILOGUE  .  .  .  .  .  .203 


The  End  of  a  Chapter 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST 

PEOPLE  who  are  old  enough  to  write  memoirs 
have  usually  lost  their  memory.  Fresh  mem- 
ories have  few  memoirs.  I  have  had  to  fall 
back  upon  the  unpublished  memoirs  of  others, 
having  been  born  only  half-way  through  the 
eighties.  I  was  brought  up  at  Glaslough,  in 
the  county  of  Monaghan,  in  Ireland,  on  the 
townland  of  Castle  Lesly — such  space  upon 
God's  earth  as  previous  Leslies  had  been  able 
to  hold  by  purchase,  forfeiture,  or  force  of 
arms  against  "The  MacKenna  of  Truagh." 
The  Irish  branch  of  the  Leslies  was  founded 
by  Bishop  John  Leslie,  who  kept  his  diocese 
of  the  Isles  creditably  clear  of  Cromwellians 
during  the  Civil  War.  In  Ireland,  as  Bishop 
of  Raphoe,  he  built  a  fort  instead  of  a  palace, 
and  was  known  as  "The  Fighting  Bishop." 
Before  battle  he  used  to  invoke  divine  neu- 
trality on  the  plea  that  "though  we  are  sin- 
ners, the  enemy  are  not  saints."  He  lived 
to  be  a  centenarian,  and  at  the  Restoration 
rode  from  Chester  to  London  a  distance  of  one 
hundred  and  eighty  miles  to  welcome  the  King. 


4          THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

He  was  then  in  his  ninetieth  year.  From  this 
grim  stuff  sprang  a  race  of  theologian  squires 
with  an  addiction  to  lost  causes.  They  sup- 
ported the  Stuarts  and  voted  against  the  Union. 
One  fled  into  exile  rather  than  acknowledge 
William  of  Orange,  and  another  refused  a  bribe 
rather  than  betray  the  Irish  Parliament.  It 
was  a  Leslie  who  took  out  a  patent  for  the  lost 
island  of  Atlantis  or  Brazil,  which  was  last  seen 
floating  down  Gal  way  Bay.  The  family  were 
perhaps  lucky  to  have  so  much  real  land  to 
restore  to  the  original  owners  under  the  Land 
Purchase  Acts. 

A  great-grandson  of  "The  Fighting  Bishop" 
was  Charles.  He  and  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton's father  married  sisters.  Charles's  grand- 
son is  my  grandfather,  Sir  John  Leslie,  who 
could  claim  last  year,  in  the  centenary  of 
Waterloo,  to  be  a  surviving  cousin  of  the  vic- 
tor. To  make  the  link  with  the  past  I  asked 
him  to  sign  my  application  to  go  to  the  Great 
War. 

Before  I  went,  I  spent  some  hours  delving 
in  his  memory,  which  is  very  accurate  con- 
cerning events  before  the  Crimean  War.  Born 
in  1822,  he  has  seen  the  whole  Victorian  era 
from  its  prelude  to  its  aftermath.  He  has 
outlived  almost  all  his  contemporaries,  and 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST  5 

even  seen  their  children  die  of  old  age.  A 
third  and  a  fourth  generation  he  has  seen  go 
out  to  perish  in  the  War  of  wars. 

The  only  thing  he  could  remember  of  the 
old  duke  was  being  taken  to  see  him  as  a 
schoolboy  and  getting  no  tip !  Scores  re- 
member the  duke's  funeral,  but  my  grand- 
father is  probably  the  only  living  person  who 
has  seen  Talleyrand  and  heard  the  voice  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott. 

He  can  remember  five  reigns.  George  IV 
he  once  saw  looking  through  a  window  in  his 
last  days,  and  he  heard  the  London  newsboys 
cry  his  death.  He  was  born  while  Pius  VII 
(Napoleon's  pope)  was  still  alive  and  Monroe 
was  President  of  the  States.  His  father,  born 
in  1769,  was  not  able  to  distinguish  between 
American  citizens  and  Yankee  rebels ! . 

My  grandfather  saw  Talleyrand  on  the 
steps  of  Hertford  House  when  ambassador  of 
France  to  St.  James.  Talleyrand  had  been 
a  French  bishop  before  the  Revolution  and 
subdeacon  at  the  coronation  of  Louis  XVI ! 
My  grandfather  was  chiefly  interested  in  the 
white-capped  cooks  whom  that  astute  diplomat 
had  introduced  into  London.  Little  did  he 
dream  that  a  granddaughter  of  his  would  one 
day  marry  the  great-grandson  of  the  Comte 


6          THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

de   Flahaut,    Talleyrand's    illegitimate    son — 
(according  to  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica). 

As  a  boy  travelling  in  a  Scotland  undefiled 
by  railways  he  once  listened  to  a  kind  old 
gentleman,  who  entered  the  coach  at  Edin- 
burgh and  explained  the  antiquities  as  they 
passed.  It  was  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  his  anec- 
dotage.  Sir  Walter  died  in  1834,  the  year  my 
grandfather  went  to  Harrow  School.  It  was 
in  the  stern  old  days  of  William  IV,  and  he 
remembers  vividly  the  week's  journey  from 
Glaslough  to  Harrow  on  the  top  of  a  coach 
without  an  overcoat !  In  October,  1834,  he 
saw  the  old  House  of  Parliament  burning  from 
the  top  of  Harrow  Hill.  His  house,  Dr.  Long- 
ley's,  also  suffered  a  fire,  and  he  saw  the  future 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  in  a  fit  of  economic 
panic,  throw  the  contents  of  the  boys'  bed- 
rooms on  the  heads  of  those  who  were  putting 
out  the  fire  from  below !  He  was  taught  to 
write  Latin  verses  by  "Harry"  Drury,  who 
had  instilled  a  first  notion  of  the  poetic  art  into 
Byron  forty  years  before.  Dr.  George  Butler 
was  then  headmaster,  whose  son,  the  present 
Master  of  Trinity  told  me  that  Drury  and 
Byron  sat  up  one  whole  night  discussing  the 
immortality  of  the  soul.  With  morning  they 
parted — Drury  to  school  and  Byron  to  bathe, 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST  7 

While  a  Harrow  boy  he  subscribed  to  the 
first  shilling  parts  of  Pickwick  Papers,  by  an 
unknown  author.  Unfortunately  he  threw 
them  away  when  read.  One  day  an  old  boy 
came  down  to  the  school  dressed  in  a  sporting 
check,  the  boys  clustering  round  to  hear  his 
yarns.  It  was  the  future  Cardinal  Manning, 
whom  my  grandfather  describes  as  the  neatest 
rider  in  Rotten  Row.  Another  day  the  poet 
Wordsworth  came  down  to  the  school. 

At  Oxford  he  went  to  Christ  Church  under 
Dean  Gaisford  who  unkindly  rusticated  him 
for  high  spirits.  He  remembered  the  youth- 
ful Ruskin  then  at  Christ  Church  being  ragged 
by  hearty  Britons.  Ruskin  caused  great 
amusement  by  bringing  a  portentous  old 
mother  with  him  to  college,  whom  the  young 
bloods  considered  "a  holy  horror." 

After  playing  cricket  for  Oxford  against 
Cambridge  in  1843,  he  went  on  the  grand  tour, 
riding  through  Spain  with  Mr.  Hardinge,  fa- 
ther of  the  Indian  viceroy.  Later  he  drove  to 
Rome,  through  Italy,  meeting  Rossini  and  Mrs. 
Browning,  and  saw  George  Sand  smoke — the 
first  lady  in  Europe  to  do  so.  These  were  the 
picturesque  days  when  the  Pope  still  walked 
the  streets,  and  the  monsignori  presided  over 
the  police  and  sewers.  When  he  returned  to 


8         THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Rome  forty  years  later  both  Pope  and  Tiber 
had  been  enclosed  within  stone  walls  to  the 
great  artistic  loss  of  the  city. 

He  knew  London  in  the  forties,  and  heard 
men  who  are  now  legendary  like  Macaulay, 
Brougham,  and  Peel  speak  in  Parliament. 
His  Oxford  tutor  warned  him  not  to  attend 
Newman's  Anglican  sermons,  and  he  recalls 
the  timid  little,  ethereal,  Jew-like  doctor, 
whose  secession  later  shook  the  church, 
moving  through  the  lanes  of  Oxford. 

In  those  days  Tom  Moore  and  O'Connell 
played  the  parts  of  Yeats  and  Redmond  in 
London  to-day.  Moore  had  hung  up  his  rebel 
harp  in  the  Whig  salons  of  London  when  my 
grandfather  met  him,  while  O'Connell  used 
to  strut  the  streets  modulating  his  small  talk 
with  the  gestures  of  oratory.  He  could  re- 
member Louis  Philippe  in  Hyde  Park,  and 
Napoleon  III  he  knew  as  a  foreign  adventurer 
prowling  St.  James  Street  for  country-house 
invitations.  The  future  Emperor  was  not 
considered  a  sportsman,  and  when  he  proposed 
to  my  grandmother's  sister  (Lady  Fortescue) 
he  was  refused  by  Colonel  Darner  as  a  penniless 
Frenchman  !  Darner  had  been  on  Cathcart's 
staff  at  Waterloo,  and  had  a  poor  opinion  of  the 
Bonapartes !  My  grandmother  remembers  the 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST  9 

future  Emperor  staying  at  their  home  at  Came 
in  Dorset,  and  winning  her  over  with  half- 
crowns  and  barley-sugar,  which  he  used  to 
buy  for  her  in  Dorchester.  Everybody  thought 
Napoleon  dull  and  fled  him.  When  found 
wandering  alone  the  dreamer  remarked  to  one 
of  the  family:  "II  par  ait  que  fennuie  ces 
jeunes  gens."  He  used  to  tell  old  Darner: 
"  Vous  me  verrez  un  jour  aux  Tuileries"  Darner 
doubtless  shook  his  head,  for  like  all  soldiers 
of  that  time  he  had  spent  his  life  getting  the 
uncle  out  of  the  Tuileries.  As  attache  in  Rus- 
sia he  had  witnessed  the  retreat  from  Moscow. 
So  terrible  were  the  scenes,  when  not  only 
"General  Fevrier"  but  the  wolves  fought  for 
the  Czar,  that  he  would  never  mention  them. 
When  his  daughter  married  Lord  Fortescue, 
Napoleon  III  sent  her  a  beautiful  fan  from 
the  Tuileries  which  had  belonged  to  his  mother 
the  Queen  Hortense. 

A  quaint  memory  of  my  grandfather  was 
D'Orsay  the  last  of  the  Dandies,  whom  he 
affected  with  the  young  bloods  of  the  time. 
By  his  account  D'Orsay  was  only  an  early 
Victorian  Oscar  Wilde  living  on  his  clothes 
and  his  notoriety.  When  D'Orsay  died,  he 
left  him  his  most  precious  possession — his 
valet,  whose  wages  he  had  omitted  to  pay 


10        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

for  some  years.  The  "  gorgeous  "  Lady  Bless- 
ington  he  recalled  supported  by  two  footmen, 
no  less  gorgeous,  for  crutches. 

In  the  world  of  sport  he  has  seen  wonderful 
changes.  He  was  the  last  to  use  a  muzzle- 
loader  to  shoot  pheasants,  and  he  often  killed 
them  at  distances  which  modern  guns  did  not 
reach.  He  has  seen  the  rise  and  decline  and 
final  disappearance  of  modern  first-class  cricket. 
He  is  the  doyen  of  the  Marylebone  Cricket 
Club,  the  hallowed  ark  of  all  English  cricket. 
His  membership  dates  from  1841.  As  a  Har- 
row boy  he  saw  his  first  Derby  in  Blooms- 
bury 's  year,  1839 — the  horse  that  "  won  the 
Derby  and  a  lawsuit  and  broiled  the  Lords  and 
the  Commons";  and  as  a  young  officer  he  won 
the  Grand  Military  Steeplechase  on  his  own 
horse.  The  late  Lord  Harlech  recorded  how 
he  appeared  unattended  and  won  as  an  out- 
sider by  beautiful  riding. 

In  his  youth  prize-fighting  was  the  na- 
tional sport,  and  "the  champion  of  England" 
was,  after  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  un- 
officially the  second  person  in  the  realm.  He 
watched  the  famous  fight  between  Sayers  and 
Heenan,  which  roused  more  real  feeling  be- 
tween England  and  America  than  the  Ala- 
bama.  To  a  degenerate  generation  he  used 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST          11 

to  describe  how  Sayers  faced  his  rival  like  a 
polo-pony  against  a  dray-horse,  and  though  his 
right  arm  was  soon  put  out  of  action  fought 
thirty  rounds  with  his  left  until  Heenan's 
face  was  a  red  mask.  Unfortunately,  Sayers's 
backers  broke  the  ring  rather  than  lose  their 
money,  and  the  fight  was  declared  drawn.  It 
was  the  climax  and  end  of  the  old  English 
boxing  without  gloves.  Never  again  did  dep- 
utations from  both  Houses  attend  a  prize- 
fight. 

My  grandfather  had  retired  from  the  army 
before  the  outbreak  of  the  Crimean  War  in 
order  to  devote  himself  to  art.  If  he  is  not 
the  oldest  cavalry  officer  in  England,*  he  is  the 
last  of  the  pre-Raphaelites.  Holman  Hunt, 
and  Millais,  whose  profile  resembled  his,  be- 
came his  close  friends.  Landseer  came  to  him 
for  comfort  as  one  of  the  few  artists  who  ap- 
proved his  lions  in  Trafalgar  Square.  It  was 
to  my  grandmother  that  Watts  wrote  a  deli- 
cate letter  explaining  that  he  married  Ellen 
Terry — to  save  her  from  the  dangers  of  the 
stage !  She  was  one  of  those  present  at  that 

*  Until  the  recent  Zeppelin  raids  he  was  the  only  surviving  soldier 
to  have  seen  service  in  the  streets  of  London.  He  rode  out  with 
the  First  Life  Guards  during  the  Chartist  riots  of  1848.  Between 
the  writing  and  printing  of  this  chapter  he  has  died.  Requiescat  in 
pace.  (January  23,  1916.) 


12        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

dreamlike  union  between  Art  and  Beauty — 
which  was  only  to  break  like  an  iridescent 
bubble.  When  Watts  died,  a  beautiful  pic- 
ture of  my  grandmother  in  her  youth  was  un- 
rolled from  the  lumber  of  his  studio. 

The  pre-Raphaelites  formed  a  circle  with 
Ruskin  for  their  criticising  genius.  Unfor- 
tunately, Millais  carried  away  Ruskin's  wife 
after  painting  her  picture.  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Millais  afterward  met  Ruskin  before  they 
could  turn  and  run.  "Hold  up  your  head 
high,  Effie,"  said  Millais,  and  poor  Ruskin 
shuffled  off  the  pavement.  At  times  the  best 
course  is  to  simulate  the  attitude  of  the  in- 
jured party. 

My  grandfather  went  to  Diisseldorf,  and 
painted  his  first  picture  in  the  Black  Forest — 
a  study  of  children  being  shown  a  crucifix. 
As  he  was  quite  unknown  it  was  a  pleasant 
surprise  to  be  placed  on  the  line  at  the  Royal 
Academy  and  to  receive  a  flattering  letter 
from  the  prince  consort,  to  whom  Germany 
and  Christianity  were  the  same.  It  was  as 
sudden  and  unique  a  brilliance  as  winning  the 
Grand  Military  without  a  backer. 

He  succeeded  his  brother  Charles  to  his 
Irish  estates  in  1871,  and  celebrated  the  event 
by  defeating  Isaac  Butt,  Parnell's  predecessor 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST          13 

in  Irish  leadership,  at  the  Monaghan  polls. 
A  few  years  later  he  was  himself  defeated  by 
Tim  Healy,  Parnell's  secretary.  It  was  the 
last  stand  the  old  gentry  and  grand  juries  made 
against  the  Nationalists.  When  I  stood  as  a 
Nationalist  nearly  thirty  years  later  I  was  ac- 
cused of  giving  my  hand  to  a  family  foe.  On 
the  contrary,  I  found  the  Nationalist  party 
then  fighting  Tim  far  more  bitterly  than  we 
ever  did.  Tim  is  the  greatest  orator  in  the 
Empire  according  to  Balfour,  and  he  has  all 
the  Celtic  gift  and  attraction  for  enmities. 
It  is  difficult  not  to  think  of  him  as  an  imp 
who  has  fallen  into  the  holy  water  by  mistake. 
It  was  lucky  for  the  Church  he  was  baptised 
a  Catholic,  for  his  tongue  can  say  terrible 
things.  When  a  minister  was  enumerating 
the  power  at  the  disposal  of  the  crown  against 
the  Boers  to  the  tune  of  "  We've  got  the  ships 
and  the  money,  and  we've  got  the  men,"  he 
paused  and  asked  what  the  Boers  had — 
"God!"  came  a  hiss — it  is  believed  from  Tim 
Healy.  At  any  rate,  the  effect  was  electric. 

My  grandfather  witnessed  an  effective  piece 
of  play  in  the  House  during  a  duel  between 
Disraeli  and  Gladstone.  During  a  heated  flight 
of  oratory  Gladstone  upset  some  pens  on  the 
table  between  them.  Disraeli  rose  and,  after 


14        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

calling  attention  to  the  fact,  slowly  replaced 
them  one  by  one.  The  effect  of  Gladstone's 
speech  was  lost  by  the  time  Disraeli  finished. 

He  had  two  brothers,  Charles  and  Tom. 
Charles  was  a  generous  landlord,  and  once 
paid  the  election  expenses  of  a  ruined  op- 
ponent. A  monument  was  erected  to  him  by 
"a  grateful  tenantry,"  but  with  some  Irish 
humour  the  bill  was  sent  in  to  the  brother  of 
the  statuee  to  pay !  Our  relations  with  our 
tenantry  have  been  so  good  that  I  may  give 
a  story  of  how  we  got  even  with  them  in  re- 
cent years.  We  were  exhibiting  turnips  at  the 
Monaghan  show,  but  of  inferior  growth,  so 
our  steward,  to  save  the  honour  of  the  family, 
stole  out  at  dead  of  night  and  removed  the 
best  turnips  from  an  old  tenant's  farm !  With 
these  we  won  handsomely,  but — the  truth 
being  told — were  disqualified. 

I  should  add  that  when  the  rents  were  re- 
duced by  the  Land  Commission,  a  number  of 
tenants  refused  to  go  into  court  out  of  re- 
spect for  my  grandfather.  Only  in  Ireland 
could  such  loyalty  exist. 

Charles  Leslie  accompanied  Lord  Hartington, 
afterward  Duke  of  Devonshire,  on  a  trip  to  the 
American  Civil  War.  They  passed  through 
the  lines  of  both  armies,  visiting  Richmond 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST          15 

and  the  White  House.  Unfortunately,  Hart- 
ington  appeared  at  a  New  York  ball  with  a 
Southern  favour  given  him  by  the  mother  of 
a  future  English  duchess.  They  were  lucky  to 
return  alive. 

Charles  Leslie  was  interested  to  find  that 
Archbishop  Hughes  of  New  York  had  been 
born  on  his  estate — amid  the  snipe  bogs  of 
Annaloghlan.  Hughes  was  perhaps  the  great- 
est Irishman  of  his  century,  with  all  the  talents 
and  none  of  the  defects  of  his  race.  If  he  suf- 
fered, like  Lincoln,  from  "education  defective," 
he  was  as  great  in  argument  or  administration. 
At  Lincoln's  request  he  went  and  persuaded 
Napoleon  III  not  to  recognise  the  South  dur- 
ing the  Civil  War.  He  was  a  Moses  to  the 
Irish  race,  for  he  established  Catholic  citizen- 
ship in  a  Promised  Land.  The  body  of  this 
great  and  simple  man  lies  under  the  Gothic 
Cathedral  he  planted  on  Fifth  Avenue. 

My  grandfather's  other  brother,  Tom  Leslie, 
was  wounded  in  the  Crimea  by  a  Russian 
bullet,  which  the  commander-in-chief  sent 
home  to  his  mother.  He  was  on  Lord  Rag- 
lan's staff,  and  it  was  to  him  the  order  re- 
sulting in  the  Charge  of  Balaclava  was  first 
given.  He  told  me  nearly  fifty  years  later 
that  he  was  about  to  take  the  order  which 
ran — "Lord  Raglan  wishes  the  cavalry  to 


16        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

advance  rapidly  to  the  front,  and  try  to  pre- 
vent the  enemy  carrying  away  the  guns." 

But  a  popular  young  officer,  Captain  Nolan, 
asked  for  the  honour  and  galloped  off  with 
the  message  to  Lord  Lucan,  leaving  Tom  to 
curse  what  is  known  in  the  family  as  "Leslie 
Luck." 

Raglan  wished  some  Turkish  guns  taken 
by  the  Russians  to  be  saved,  but  Lucan  could 
not  see  them  and  questioned  Nolan,  who, 
being  a  hot  Celt,  pointed  toward  the  Rus- 
sian guns  at  the  end  of  the  valley  and  asked 
if  he  were  afraid.  Lucan  repeated  the  blunder 
to  Lord  Cardigan,  a  duelling  rake,  who  in- 
stantly led  the  famous  charge.  As  they  swept 
toward  the  jaws  of  death,  a  headless  horse- 
man crossed  their  track  and  fell.  It  was 
Nolan,  who  had  probably  ridden  back  to  cor- 
rect his  mistake  but  was  the  first  to  be  killed 
by  the  fatal  guns.  "Some  one  had  blundered." 
At  any  rate,  it  was  not  a  Leslie. 

In  1856  my  grandfather  married  Constance, 
daughter  of  "Minny"  Seymour,  the  adopted 
daughter  of  Mrs.  Fitzherbert,  the  wife  of 
George  IV.  With  the  permission  of  Edward 
VII,  and  some  aid  from  my  grandmother, 
Mr.  Wilkins  has  written  two  volumes  on  tkat 
royal  romance. 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST          17 

George  IV  actually  married  Mrs.  Fitzher- 
bert  in  the  presence  of  her  brother  and  uncle 
when  Prince  of  Wales.  It  was  of  her  some 
poet  wrote  when  she  lived  at  Richmond: 

"I  would  crowns  resign  to  call  her  mine, 
Sweet  lass  of  Richmond  Hill." 

The  trouble  was  that  Mrs.  Fitzherbert  was 
a  devout  Catholic,  and  insisted  on  a  legal 
wedding,  which  was  afterward  denied  by 
Fox  in  the  House.  Mrs.  Fitzherbert  never 
used  her  position  for  personal  ends.  What- 
ever influence  in  the  prince's  life  was  good 
came  from  her.  Whatever  unhappiness  en- 
tered hers  came  from  him.  Even  after  he 
slighted  her  and  married  an  official  queen, 
she  was  willing  to  return  to  him  with  the  per- 
mission of  the  Pope,  in  whose  eyes  her  mar- 
riage remained  legal  and  binding.  Her  gentle 
piety  and  dauntless  wifehood  endeared  her  to 
the  whole  royal  family,  and  William  IV  gave 
her  leave  to  wear  widow's  weeds  for  George 
IV,  who  was  buried  with  her  miniature  round 
his  neck.  She  refused  the  title  of  duchess  as 
savouring  of  the  rank  of  a  royal  courtesan, 
but  her  servants  wore  the  royal  livery. 

After  the  King's  death  the  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington induced  her  to  burn  all  the  papers  in 


18        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

her  possession  except  the  certificate  of  the 
marriage,  a  letter,  and  the  will  of  the  King,  a 
letter  by  the  officiating  minister,  and  a  note 
written  by  Mrs.  Fitzherbert  attached  to  it, 
which  were  placed  in  Coutt's  Bank.  King 
Edward  VII  gave  permission  to  Wilkins  to 
publish  what  was  needed  to  prove  the  mar- 
riage when  the  box  was  opened,  more  than 
seventy  years  later.  The  papers  were  then 
removed  to  the  Windsor  Archives.  They 
were  not  published  in  full  or  perhaps  the 
mystery  of  Mrs.  Fitzherbert's  children  might 
have  been  cleared. 

It  is  said  that  she  bore  the  prince  children, 
but  as  they  were  born  sacramentally  her  own 
family  had  naught  to  conceal.  The  unproven 
tradition  among  her  Catholic  relatives  was 
that  she  had  children,  and  that  one  of  them 
was  at  one  time  designed  to  marry  the  re- 
stored Bourbon  King  of  France.  The  follow- 
ing exists  in  Mrs.  Fitzherbert's  handwriting: 

I,  Mary  Fitzherbert  desire  my  executors  to  employ  the  will 
signed  by  George  P  of  W's  in  support  of  my  character  with 
Posterity,  but  I  do  not  ask  to  found  upon  it,  any  pecuniary 
claims  on  the  personalty  of  His  late  Majesty,  George  the 
4th  so  witness  my  hand. 

this day  of 1836. 

I,  Mary  Fitzherbert,  moreover  testify  that  my  union  with 
George  P.  of  Wales  was  without  issue. 
Witness 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST          19 

This  is  obviously  a  rough  copy  and,  being 
unsigned,  leaves  the  mystery  a  mystery. 

Though  there  have  been  American  pre- 
tenders to  be  descended  from  George  IV  and 
Mrs.  Fitzherbert,  she  left  her  personalty  to 
her  adopted  daughter  "Minny"  Seymour  and 
her  favourite  niece  Marianne  Smythe.  It  has 
been  supposed  they  were  her  children. 
"Minny"  (Mary  Georgiana)  Seymour  was 
my  great-grandmother,  daughter  of  Lord 
Hugh  and  Lady  Horatia  Seymour.  If  she 
had  been  Mrs.  Fitzherbert's  daughter,  Mrs. 
Fitzherbert  would  never  have  promised  to 
bring  her  up  Protestant.  Marianne  Smythe, 
however,  married  into  the  Catholic  Jerning- 
hams.  Difficulties  pursued  Mrs.  Fitzherbert. 
Lord  Hugh  Seymour  died,  mentioning  all  his 
children  except  "Minny"  (Mary)  Seymour. 
The  Seymours  wished  to  remove  the  child 
from  Mrs.  Fitzherbert.  The  "Seymour  Case" 
followed,  in  which  the  Prince  of  Wales  sup- 
ported Mrs.  Fitzherbert's  claim  to  the  child 
and  even  canvassed  the  peers  on  her  behalf. 
In  the  end  Lord  Hertford,  the  head  of  the 
Seymours,  committed  her  to  Mrs.  Fitzherbert's 
care.  The  prince  made  a  great  pet  of  her,  and 
her  letters  to  him  (addressed  to  "dear  Prinny  ") 
are  extant  in  the  Windsor  Archives.  During 


20        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

the  "Seymour  Case"  the  prince  said  in  his 
affidavit  that  he  was  under  a  dying  request 
from  Lady  Horatia  Seymour — "to  be  the 
father  and  protector  through  life  of  this  dear 
child." 

The  prince  certainly  kept  his  promise.  When 
the  girl  was  pressed  by  her  family  to  marry 
Lord  Francis  Egerton,  at  a  time  that  her  heart 
was  set  on  Colonel  Darner,  she  appealed  to 
"Prinny"  who  had  become  George  IV.  In 
her  letter  she  begged  the  protection  of  one 
"toward  whom  from  my  peculiar  position  I 
am  more  bound  than  any  other  human  being." 
And  she  continued:  "Your  Majesty's  great 
goodness  and  parental  conduct  which  com- 
menced with  my  earliest  years,  and  has  been 
graciously  extended  to  me  to  this  present 
moment,  only  increases  the  pain  and  embar- 
rassment I  feel,  etc."  (July  13,  1825.) 

In  the  end  she  was  allowed  to  marry  Colonel 
Darner.  Though  the  King  treated  her  with  a 
parent's  love  it  seems  impossible  for  her  to 
have  been  Mrs.  Fitzherbert's  child.  Whether 
Mrs.  Fitzherbert  had  children  or  not  must 
remain  undecided  until  two  pages  which  have 
been  cut  from  the  Catholic  baptismal  at 
Brighton  are  restored.  The  pages  under  1800 
and  1803  have  been  removed.  After  1803  Mrs. 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST          21 

Fitzherbert  left  the  prince.  The  mystery,  if 
there  is  one,  is  undoubtedly  contained  in  the 
Windsor  Archives,  for  General  Kelly-Kenny,  a 
close  friend  of  Edward  VII,  told  me  that  Lord 
Knollys  removed  papers  to  Windsor  which 
Wilkins  was  not  allowed  to  use  when  the 
famous  box  was  opened  at  Coutt's. 

Mrs.  Fitzherbert  left  her  pearls  to  Marianne 
Smythe,  and  her  other  relics  to  "Minny" 
Darner,  who  divided  them  among  her  daughters 
— the  portrait  by  Romney  and  the  King's 
miniature  to  Lady  Fortescue,  the  locket  with 
the  King's  hair  and  the  bracelet  to  Lady  Con- 
stance Leslie,  her  pictures  and  Mrs.  Fitz- 
herbert's  rosary  to  Lady  Blanche  Heygarth. 

The  latter  has  described  to  me  being  taken 
to  Mrs.  Fitzherbert's  dying  chamber  in  Tilney 
Street.  She  recognised  the  litanies  which 
were  chanted  on  that  occasion  on  reading 
Newman's  Dream  of  Gerontius  afterward. 
Together  with  my  grandmother  she  erected 
the  monument  to  Mrs.  Fitzherbert  in  the 
Catholic  church  at  Brighton.  On  her  hand 
were  chiselled  the  wedding-rings  of  her  two 
Catholic  husbands,  and  finally  the  fatal  circlet 
which  united  her  to  "the  First  Gentleman" 
and  the  uttermost  cad  in  Europe. 

By  accidental  irony,  on  the  wall  above  her 


22        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

tomb  is  the  stray  lettering — Sancte  Georgi, 
ora  pro  nobis  (St.  George,  pray  for  us).  It 
were  more  fitting  that  an  Ave  Maria  were  in- 
scribed on  the  coffin  of  a  King,  whose  sole 
claim  to  grace  is  that  he  was  the  husband  of 
Maria  Fitzherbert! 

My  grandmother  remembers  Colonel  Darner 
taking  her  to  Brussels  after  the  coup  d'etat 
of  1851,  and  hearing  Thiers  abuse  "le  coquin" 
as  he  called  Napoleon.  She  has  many  memories 
of  the  Vanity  Fair  of  Thackeray's  tune.  Cu- 
riously enough,  it  was  her  relative,  Lord  Hert- 
ford, whom  he  pilloried  as  the  wicked  Marquis 
of  Steyne  in  Vanity  Fair,  and  even  sketched 
from  life  in  the  suppressed  plate  of  the  first 
edition.  Thackeray  was  due  to  dine  at  her 
house  the  night  before  he  died,  and  his  last 
letter  was  written  to  refuse.  In  the  exquisite 
minuscules  with  which  he  wrote  to  friends  he 
sent  word: 

Saturday 
DEAR  MBS.  LESLIE: 

Since  I  wrote  and  said  yes,  I  have  been  in  bed  2  days  and 
fate  and  the  Doctor  say  No.  Indeed  I  am  unfit  to  come  (I 
have  only  this  minute  crawled  down  to  my  sofa)  and  no- 
body can  be  more  sorry  than 

Yours  very  faithfully, 

W.  M.  THACKERAY. 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST          23 

This  was  written  on  December  22,  1863, 
and  the  writer  died  two  days  later.  Years 
afterward  his  daughter  saw  the  letter  and 
said  it  must  have  been  the  last  time  he  ever 
wrote.* 

Thackeray  and  Dickens  used  to  be  on  bad 
terms.  My  grandmother  recalls  the  ludicrous 
incident  which  brought  them  together.  As 
they  both  left  the  Athenseum,  unknown  to 
each  other,  they  seized  the  same  hat.  The 
effect  was  ludicrous  enough  to  appeal  even  to 
professional  humourists  and  they  shook  hands. 

Her  strangest  link  with  the  past  was  being 
taken  to  see  Miss  Berry  then  ninety  years  of 
age,  to  whom  Horace  Walpole  had  proposed 
marriage.  Miss  Berry  was  the  anonymous 
figurehead  of  Thackeray's  Four  Georges  when 
he  wrote: 

A  very  few  years  since  I  knew  familiarly  a  lady  who  had 
been  asked  in  marriage  by  Horace  Walpole,  who  had  been 
patted  on  the  head  by  George  I.  This  lady  had  knocked  at 
Doctor  Johnson's  door;  had  been  intimate  with  Fox.  I  often 
thought  as  I  took  my  kind  old  friend's  hand,  how  with  it  I 
held  on  to  the  old  Society  of  wits  and  men  of  the  world. 

Perhaps  my  grandmother  is  now  the  only 
living  person  to  have  touched  a  hand  that 

*  She  wrote  in  1901 :  "  I  could  have  cried  over  the  letter  of  my 
father.  It  was  quite  strongly  and  well  written.  Who  could  have 
thought  that  dear  pen  was  to  be  laid  aside  for  ever  ?  " 


24        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

knocked  on  Johnson's  door.  She  has  seen 
the  evolution  of  society  from  the  crinoline  to 
the  tango,  from  the  time  when  it  was  a  close 
club  to  the  latter  days  when  it  resembled  a 
mob.  Joachim  and  Rubinstein  had  played 
in  her  house  in  early  days.  In  the  fifties  she 
heard  Mrs.  Kemble  sing  one  of  his  poems  to 
Tennyson,  with  Rossetti,  Burne-Jones,  and 
Doyle  for  audience.  Landseer  used  to  mimic 
"The  Dook,"  as  Wellington  was  called,  in  her 
salon.  In  those  days  gold  was  pronounced 
"gould"  and  china  "cheney."  She,noted  1860 
as  about  the  year  that  Christmas  cards  super- 
seded valentines.  She  attended  the  last  ball 
given  by  Palmer ston,*  and  saw  him  weeping 
for  the  Prince  Consort — the  only  time  tears 
were  recorded  of  "Pam."  Though  innocent  of 
any  sporting  proclivity,  she  was  loyal  enough 
to  dream  that  Edward  VII's  Persimmon  would 
win  the  Derby,  and  on  the  strength  of  her 
dream  wagered  five  pounds  successfully  in  the 
cause  of  charity. 

When  Lady  Cardigan's  grim  memoirs  of  the 
English  aristocracy  were  published,  she  bought 
up  and  burned  the  remainder  of  the  first  edition. 

*I  may  add  a  last  memory  from  her  note-book:  "Countess  Cas- 
tiglione's  appearance  at  Lady  Palmerston's  28  June,  1862,  gloriously 
beautiful — quite  mobbed — and  all  the  English  beauties  paled  before 
her."  Ou  aont  lea  neigea  d'antan  f 


LINKS  WITH  THE  PAST  25 

It  was  her  auto-da-fe  in  defence  of  many  friends 
who  could  no  longer  defend  themselves — an 
act  which  befitted  her  as  one  of  the  surviving 
links  with  a  time  and  a  regime  which  is  now 
engulfed  for  ever. 


ETON  COLLEGE 

THE  English  public  school  and  the  national 
character  lie  at  each  other's  roots.  The  Eng- 
lish school  has  played  as  great  a  part  as  the 
German  schoolmaster  within  the  Empire  that 
it  has  helped  to  build.  Sedan  was  the  victory 
of  the  latter,  in  the  way  that  Wellington  said 
Waterloo  was  won  in  the  playing-fields  of 
Eton. 

In  America  and  England  the  public  school 
is  different.  The  American  institution  im- 
poses a  free  education  on  the  children  of 
citizens.  In  England  only  the  parents  of  a 
Certain  caste  or  fortune  can  afford  to  send 
their  boys  to  a  public  school.  The  school  of 
the  poor  is  "the  board-school,"  but  its  pupils 
may  not  call  themselves  public-school  men 
in  after  life.  That  is  the  proud  distinction 
of  those  who  have  been  to  Eton,  Harrow, 
Winchester,  Westminster,  and  Rugby — the 
planets  of  the  system — or  to  one  of  the  fifty 
subsidiary  schools  that  follow  in  their  wake. 
The  public-school  system  is  traditional  and 

26 


ETON  COLLEGE  27 

caste-making.  The  men  from  the  public 
schools  form  the  distinctive  class  between  the 
hereditary  gentry  and  the  mob.  They  are 
the  bulwark  of  the  professions  and  of  the 
services.  In  peace  time  they  maintain  the 
customs  and  practice  of  sport.  But  the  Great 
War  has  put  their  system  on  trial.  The  new 
armies  are  largely  officered  by  public-school 
men. 

My  school  experience  was  the  same  as  that 
of  a  generation  born  in  the  eighties  and  nine- 
ties, who  were  therefore  of  cannonable  age 
at  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  Even  if  my  con- 
temporaries had  not  been  for  the  most  part 
cut  down  in  their  flower,  we  should  have  all 
agreed  that  school-time  was  the  best  phase  of 
life.  In  memory  of  man  English  schools, 
private  or  public,  were  hotbeds  of  cruelty. 
Dickens  helped  to  abolish  Dotheboys  Hall 
with  a  pen  more  stinging  than  the  cane  of 
Squeers,  whose  model  in  life  was  actually 
commemorated  by  a  church  window.  At  Har- 
row in  the  thirties  my  grandfather  was  bullied 
and  even  roasted  at  a  fire  by  his  fagmaster. 
At  Eton  and  Rugby  the  customs  were  just 
as  brutal.  Mere  children  were  tossed  in 
blankets  or  thrashed  by  other  boys  for  ig- 
norance of  the  school  slang. 


28        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

In  later  Victorian  days  schools  became  as 
pleasant  to  the  boys  as  expensive  to  the 
parents.  Luxury  and  sport  were  developed. 
Bullying  declined  to  favouritism.  Boys  came 
to  love  their  schools  with  a  religious  passion. 

I  went  to  Ludgrove,  one  of  a  score  of  private 
schools  preparing  for  Eton.  It  was  under 
Arthur  Dunn,  captain  of  the  English  Eleven. 
He  was  assisted  by  a  staff  of  gentlemen  ath- 
letes, who  posed  for  the  illustrations  in  the 
Badmington  Book  of  Football.  There  was  no 
suspicion  of  pedagogue  among  them,  and  they 
became  the  objects  of  our  sincere  hero-worship. 
They  included  "Joe"  Smith,  another  of  Eng- 
land's captains,  who  saved  Oxford  from  de- 
feat in  the  most  famous  of  cricket  encounters 
with  Cambridge.  Another  was  H.  P.  Hansell, 
whose  courtly  mien  and  polished  French  have 
been  since  devoted  to  tutoring  England's 
next  King.  He  was  a  connoisseur  in  China 
and  a  man  of  delicate  taste,  liable  to  be  dis- 
turbed with  sad  wrath  when  a  boy  wrote  God 
without  a  capital  G.  He  has  become  a  well- 
known  character  in  the  public  eye  accompany- 
ing the  Prince  of  Wales  on  all  occasions,  even 
to  Paris,  where  the  irrepressible  Parisians  re- 
marked that  there  was  "more  Hansel  than 
Gretel"  permitted  in  the  prince's  company. 


ETON  COLLEGE  29 

Arthur  Dunn  taught  us  to  play  football  as 
honourably  as  the  game  of  life,  to  recite  the 
Kings  of  Judah  and  Israel,  to  love  God  and 
to  hate  Harrow.  He  died  in  his  prime  as  the 
result  of  football  strain — a  bright  and  lovable 
memory,  touching  "muscular  Christianity"  at 
its  highest.  Yet  most  of  his  boys  were  doomed 
to  die  younger  than  he.  To  have  been  a  school- 
boy in  the  nineties  was  to  become  fodder  for 
the  war  flames  of  the  next  century. 

On  Ascension  Day,  1898,  the  school  flag  was 
solemnly  lowered.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  dead, 
and  a  solemn  hush  overspread  the  school, 
though  some  of  us,  scions  of  the  landed  class, 
felt  that  the  devil  had  taken  his  due.  It 
marked  as  well  as  any  date  the  end  of  the 
Victorian  era  of  which  jubilees  were  the  climax. 
Henceforth  the  Empire,  glutted  with  a  seventh 
of  the  globe,  was  to  experience  difficulty  and 
even  the  symptoms  of  disaster.  The  follow- 
ing year  brought  the  Boer  War,  in  which  loss 
of  fame  was  ill  concealed  in  farce.  By  the 
time  the  tears,  recriminations,  and  laughter 
aroused  by  the  war  were  finished,  Queen  Vic- 
toria and  the  century  associated  with  her 
name  had  passed  to  the  historians. 

Meanwhile,  with  the  aid  of  a  little  Latin 
and  less  Greek,  I  was  making  my  way  through 


30        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Eton,  greatest  if  no  longer  the  most  select 
of  the  public  schools.  Eton  is  a  traditional 
republic  of  a  thousand  boys  divided  into 
fifteen  houses,  each  enjoying  separate  govern- 
ment but  federated  for  purposes  of  sport  and 
study  not  unlike  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica. The  school  is  ruled  by  a  society  of  ath- 
letes drawn  from  all  the  houses,  who  stand  in 
relation  to  the  Headmaster  as  the  Senate  of 
the  United  States  stands  to  the  President. 
The  Head  is  chosen  not  by  the  votes  of  the 
school,  but  by  a  governing  body.  However, 
as  an  inclination  to  democracy  he  cannot  use 
the  birch  until  it  is  presented  to  him  formally 
by  the  boys  themselves. 

In  the  matter  of  education,  Eton  does  not 
educate  so  much  as  initiate.  She  takes  no 
pride  in  conferring  a  sound  commercial  train- 
ing. Only  one  of  my  contemporaries  has  since 
"made  his  fortune,"  which  he  did  while  still 
in  his  teens  by  making  an  early  corner  in  pic- 
ture post-cards  to  the  mild  amazement  of  his 
instructors.  Eton  invests  boys  with  a  social 
stamp  entitling  them  to  enter  the  freemasonry 
of  English  gentlemen.  Of  this  much-envied 
and  much-decried  society  there  are  roughly 
three  ascending  degrees  recognised  unofficially 
throughout  the  Empire. 


ETON  COLLEGE  31 

1.  "Sportsmen." 

2.  Sportsmen  who  have  been  at  Oxford  and 
Cambridge. 

3.  Old  Etonians. 

I  fear  that  old  Etonians  have  tended  to 
seclude  themselves  in  a  caste  by  themselves. 
It  is  the  defect  of  a  social  quality.  It  is  Eton's 
pride  that  she  produces  men  and  not  "mugs," 
guiding  statesmen  and  not  pushful  politicians, 
viceroys  and  not  commercial  nabobs,  and  on 
a  lower  scale  after-dinner  speakers  rather  than 
orators,  hunting  parsons  rather  than  mystic 
theologians.  Nevertheless,  she  reared  Pusey, 
the  chief  theologian  of  the  age,  and  Labou- 
chere,  a  pure  wire-puller.  Her  training  be- 
fits a  future  chancellor  better  than  the  bank 
clerk  in  posse.  The  Etonian  prefers  graceful 
dignity  to  intellectual  study.  It  was  typical 
for  a  most  brilliant  son,  Randolph  Churchill, 
to  refer  to  decimal  points,  when  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer,  as  "those  damned  dots!" 
Not  unlike  Castlereagh,  who  is  said  to  have 
given  up  Java  because  he  could  not  find  it 
on  the  map.  The  exact  sciences  have  never 
appealed  to  English  gentlemen.  They  have 
left  clerkship  and  surveying,  like  sanitation, 
to  the  middle  classes.  It  is  a  pity  that  the 
public  schools  do  not  produce  the  scientific 


32        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

or  efficient  spirit.  It  accounts  for  German  suc- 
cesses in  commerce  and  in  war. 

There  is  no  modern  side  at  Eton.  Modern 
languages  are  a  side-show.  Science,  irreverently 
called  "stinks,"  is  taught  rather  like  the  ac- 
complishment of  drawing-room  conjuring.  The 
main  studies  are  Latin  and  Greek,  which 
have  lost  their  public  value  since  the  classics 
are  no  longer  quoted  in  Parliament.  Boys 
are  served  with  daily  rations  of  Latin  and 
Greek  that  are  seldom  absorbed  with  pleasure 
or  profit.  Every  week  claims  a  copy  of  Latin 
verses,  which  to  the  ordinary  boy  is  a  mad- 
dening exercise  in  Chinese  puzzledom.  Only 
a  few  reach  the  standard  which  would  enable 
them  to  write  Latin  epitaphs  for  Westminster 
Abbey  without  disturbing  Poets'  Corner  with 
a  false  quantity. 

The  only  English  poetry  we  learned  was  in 
the  guise  of  Latin  exercises.  My  acquaintance 
with  the  Celtic  School  dates  from  a  feverish 
night  turning  Yeats  into  Latin  elegiacs.  To 
clothe  lines  like — 

"  My  brother  is  priest  in  Kilvarnet, 
My  cousin  in  Maharabuie  " 

with  Ovidian  measure  is  like  Dr.  Haig  Brown's 
tour  de  force  in  putting  Euclid  (Prop.  I)  into 
Latin  verse! 


ETON  COLLEGE  33 

The  classical  curriculum  produced  the  re- 
fined scholarship  and  literary  taste  which 
were  so  much  acclaimed  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  The  art  of  apt  quotation  had  a 
public  value,  and  Etonians  led  the  way  in 
applying  Horace  and  Virgil  to  modern  contin- 
gencies. Ever  memorable  at  Eton  was  the 
reply  of  a  master  who  had  been  skating  on  a 
flooded  field  (we  called  Philippi)  in  the  words 
of  Horace,  "Philippis  v&rsa  acies  retro,"  which 
can  be  exactly  rendered:  "Turning  the  out- 
side edge  at  Philippi"  !  As  brilliant  was  the 
flash  in  which  some  one  discovered  the  Greek 
for  "muscular  Christianity"  in  Thucydides — 
Philosophoumen  aneu  malakias  (We  are  lovers 
of  wisdom  without  softness). 

Apt  turns  to  Scripture  were  equally  ap- 
plauded. When  a  boy  accused  a  master  of 
needing  a  crib  himself,  another  quoted  from 
Proverbs:  "The  ass  knoweth  his  master's  crib." 
It  was  a  tradition  that  "Judy"  Durnford, 
when  Lower  Master,  found  a  button  in  the 
chapel  collection,  which  he  read  out  in  terms 
of  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence,  "and  one 
trouser-button ! "  proceeding  immediately  with 
the  words  of  the  service — "  Rend  your  hearts 
and  not  your  garments!" 

It  is  bad  taste  at  Eton  to  assume  aught  but 


34        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

a  bored  indifference  to  school  work.  Enthu- 
siasm is  reserved  for  games.  To  be  too  clever 
or  intellectual  is  resented  as  un-English.  The 
quality  which  is  most  encouraged  and  re- 
warded in  Germany  is  repressed  in  English 
schools  by  unwritten  laws  among  the  boys 
themselves.  About  one  boy  in  ten  works  his 
hardest,  and  he  is  nicknamed  "a  sap,"  since 
it  is  folly  to  be  wise.  Unless  he  is  also  athletic 
he  tends  to  become  a  social  outcast.  In  my 
father's  generation  at  Eton  it  was  said  that 
only  two  boys  other  than  the  annuity-receiving 
scholars  worked  hard.  They  were  George 
Curzon  and  St.  John  Brodrick,  who  as  Indian 
Viceroy  and  Minister  of  War  have  well  il- 
lustrated the  types  of  Eton  genius  and  Eton 
plodder  in  their  respective  careers.  Then: 
quarrel  over  Indian  administration  is  historic. 
Both  were  "saps,"  but  Curzon  had  some  of 
the  "heaven-sent"  and  "all-highest"  quality 
which  distinguishes  the  Kaiser. 

No  English  school  can  teach  French  as  well 
as  Latin.  It  is  doubtful  which  teaches  less, 
the  French  teacher  who  mispronounces  Eng- 
lish or  the  Englishman  who  talks  bad  French. 
All  Frenchmen  are  "ragged"  on  a  national 
principle  at  English  schools.  At  Eton  any 
new  master  is  liable  to  traps.  In  my  time  one, 


ETON   COLLEGE  35 

a  non-Etonian,  was  informed  by  his  class  that 
by  old  custom  popular  masters  were  hoisted 
round  their  classrooms.  On  hearing  that  the 
vote  of  popularity  had  fallen  on  him,  he  suf- 
fered himself  to  be  carried  about  by  the  boys 
in  triumph  during  school  hours.  Unfortunately, 
he  mentioned  his  success  to  an  older  colleague 
and  his  career  was  closed.  Boys  are  cruel. 

I  was  present  on  a  famous  5th  of  November 
when  a  gentle  teacher  of  Mathematics  was 
"ragged"  by  the  class,  who  appeared  in  masks 
and  played  football.  Suddenly  the  door  opened 
and  Dr.  Warre,  the  majestic  Headmaster,  en- 
tered. Without  a  word  he  proceeded  to  ex- 
amine our  books,  where  the  diagrams  illus- 
trated Natural  History  oftener  than  Geometry. 
A  ludicrous  incident  occurred.  One  of  the 
boys  was  quite  unable  to  remove  the  mask 
from  his  face.  With  restrained  anger  Dr. 
Warre  inquired  his  name.  It  was  world- 
famous!  The  Head  drew  himself  up  in  his 
robes,  and  sadly  said  in  tones  as  of  a  Pope 
excommunicating  one  of  his  own  family: 

"  A  great  old  Eton  name." 
Then  he   left  the  room,  but  the  effect  was 
annihilating.     Edmond  Warre  was  one  of  the 
greatest  of  Eton  Headmasters — a  Grecian  and 
an   oarsman,  he   epitomised  English   culture. 


36        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

His  brow  was  Olympian,  and  he  carried  the 
shoulders  of  a  prize-fighter.  Out  of  his  mouth 
proceeded  praises  and  punishments  with  a 
sound  of  innocuous  thunder.  In  class  he 
often  uttered  platitudes  as  impressively  as 
though  they  came  from  a  judge  of  the  living 
and  the  dead. 

Every  morning  as  he  passed  into  chapel  be- 
hind the  solemn  file  of  his  sixth  form  per- 
forming their  traditional  goose-step  to  the 
notes  of  the  organ,  the  school  rose  to  salute 
him.  The  light  from  the  east  window  threw 
a  sightless  expression  upon  his  spectacles, 
always  reminding  me  of  (Edipus  stepping 
onto  the  Greek  stage  behind  the  rhythmic 
marching  chorus.  He  was  a  grand  old  man, 
and  worthy  to  flog  the  future  bishops  and 
statesmen  of  England.  I  do  not  know  how 
many  hundreds  of  Eton  boys  slain  in  the 
battles  of  the  Empire  will  not  rise  to  do  him 
reverence  among  the  dead.  The  Headmaster 
of  Eton  has  more  to  do  with  the  soul  of  Eng- 
land than  the  Primate  of  Canterbury.  The 
feeling  of  Etonians  to  Eton  is  more  akin  to 
religion  than  most  sentiments  in  the  English 
breast.  The  cry  of  Floreat  Etona  I  is  the  Ave 
Maria  of  the  devotion  of  all  who  have  been 
there. 


ETON  COLLEGE  37 

In  his  old  age  Warre  attempted  reform. 
He  tried  to  improve  our  handwriting,  which 
was  crabbed  by  the  system  of  writing  lines 
for  punishment,  and  he  issued  edicts  on  be- 
half of  French.  Classical  Masters  were  bid- 
den to  teach  it  for  an  hour  weekly  (but  as 
a  dead  language,  like  Latin).  There  was  an 
underground  conflict  among  the  Masters  be- 
tween the  modern  men  and  the  traditionalists 
at  this  time,  in  which  the  latter  saved  the  old 
curriculum  as  piously  as  ^Eneas  saved  the 
Palladium  from  Troy.  While  the  boys  slept 
the  conflict  raged.  Some  of  the  older  men 
were  as  quaint  as  characters  in  Dickens.  The 
nicknames  and  legends  attached  to  them  have 
been  carried  to  the  farthest  outposts  of  Em- 
pire. One  of  these  on  his  retirement  was 
presented  by  his  boys  with  a  grand  piano  in 
testimony  of  being  "the  slackest  Master  in 
the  school."  "M*  Tutor"  is  as  great  an  in- 
stitution as  "M'  Dame"  at  Eton.  A  boy's 
tutor  performed  a  consul's  role  in  helping  and 
protecting  his  pupils  when  in  trouble  in  other 
classrooms.  The  Eton  Dame  is  now  extinct. 
She  was  a  relic  of  matriarchy,  and  equally 
sacred  arid  primitive.  These  gifted  old  ladies 
who  kept  the  Eton  houses  fostered  half  the 
heroes  and  adventurers  of  Empire.  Sargent's 


38        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

brush  has  luckily  preserved  the  features  of  the 
last  of  them — old  Jane  Evans,  who  lived  to 
see  one  of  her  charges  Headmaster.  For  sixty 
years  she  had  been  at  Eton,  and  her  boys  had 
filled  her  dining-hall  with  trophies  from  all 
lands.  She  told  me  she  had  once  carried  up- 
stairs a  boy  of  five  who  was  sent  to  the  Eton 
world  in  petticoats!  She  remembered  great 
men  only  as  boys  in  Eton  jackets.  Her  keen, 
humorous  eyes  had  taken  in  generations  of 
them,  and  in  old  age  they  carried  in  con- 
sequence a  look  of  eternal  youth.  To  Eto- 
nians she  was  the  second  lady  in  the  land. 

Eton  taught  little  Theology,  moral  or  dog- 
matic. Decency  and  reverence  were  instilled 
instead.  Boys  brought  their  home  creed  with 
them  and,  perhaps,  returned  with  its  frag- 
ments. In  morals,  Etonians  have  the  English- 
man's right  to  take  their  own  line,  provided 
they  do  not  become  prigs  on  the  one  hand  or 
beasts  on  the  other.  Athletics  purify  their 
life. 

Religious  services  were  choral — a  daily 
draught  of  song  and  chant  which  Etonians 
take  as  a  memory  into  life's  dryer  places. 
The  Sunday  sermon  was  a  mild  appeal  to  take 
holy  orders  or  grow  up  like  Lord  Roberts. 
Preachers  were  advised  not  to  refer  to  the 


ETON  COLLEGE  39 

seventh  commandment  or  to  Wellington's  his- 
toric remark  about  Waterloo  and  the  playing- 
fields.  In  the  latter  case  he  was  liable  to  raise 
Homeric  applause.  On  Sunday  boys  were 
made  to  write  answers  to  scriptural  questions, 
a  hateful  tribute  to  the  Sabaoth  God  which 
made  Sunday  the  chosen  day  for  smoking  or 
catapulting  the  royal  rabbits  in  Windsor. 
True  worship  was  given  to  athletic  prowess 
and  physical  beauty.  But  immorality  was 
rare.  If  twice  in  a  generation  a  house  had 
been  cleaned  out,  the  inmates  were  rowdies 
more  than  decadents.  In  one  case  the  boys 
solemnly  hoisted  a  black  flag  as  each  of  their 
number  departed.  Love  of  athletics  made  boys 
more  Greek  than  Christian  in  their  ideals. 
Only  the  Jesuits  have  ever  been  able  to  impose 
the  supernatural  on  English  boys.  Their  ideal 
is  St.  Aloysius,  a  delicate  youth  with  a  lily. 
The  popular  Etonian  inclines  to  a  tomboy 
with  a  cricket-bat.  Aloysius  would  have  been 
better  for  games  and  Etonians  for  the  sac- 
ramental view  of  life.  The  ideal  would  be  a 
combination  of  the  two.  The  Reformation, 
while  it  made,  also  limited,  English  institu- 
tions. 

The  captain  of  Beaumont  "the  Jesuit  Eton" 
was  said  to  have  sent  a  football  challenge  to 


40        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Eton.  Eton  contemns  other  schools  just  as 
England  despises  the  rest  of  the  world,  and 
the  Eton  captain  answered:  "What  is  Beau- 
mont?" The  reply  was  superb:  "Beaumont 
is  what  Eton  was — a  school  for  Catholic 
gentlemen!" 

The  Eton  school  chorus  expresses  the  senti- 
ment felt  toward  others. 

"Harrow  may  be  more  clever. 
Rugby  may  make  more  row. 
But  nothing  in  life  shall  sever 
The  bond  that  is  round  us  now." 

The  feud  between  Eton  and  Harrow  is  im- 
placable and  inexplicable.  My  grandfather 
was  cut  by  all  his  Harrow  friends  for  sending 
his  boy  to  Eton.  Riots  used  to  follow  the 
cricket  contest.  I  believe  it  represents  the 
last  trace  of  the  war  between  Roundhead  and 
Cavalier.  On  June  4  of  1915,  Eton  officers 
in  the  trenches  telegraphed  "Gott  strafe  Har- 
row!" 

To  substitute  Germany  for  Harrow  and  the 
United  States  for  Rugby  would  give  a  fair 
idea  of  the  adult  Etonian's  outlook.  Etonians 
imbibe  a  certain  sense  of  the  effortless  supe- 
riority which  haunts  every  imperial  race.  To  be 
an  Etonian  seems  better  than  to  become  great 


ETON  COLLEGE  41 

or  successful.  Boys  are  lulled  into  a  sense  of 
unassailable  primacy  which  they  extend  later 
to  the  Empire.  We  tasted  a  divine  but  care- 
less flower,  as  though  the  lilies  on  the  Eton 
shield  were  a  kind  of  lotus.  No  Eton  captain 
can  ever  be  so  great  again  as  he  was  at  school. 
Miss  Evans  used  to  say  that  Etonians  tended  to 
become  great  men  or  black  sheep.  Arthur  Ben- 
son found  the  Eton  boy  an  insoluble  mixture 
— "Now  an  angel,  now  a  demon."  When  Ben- 
son was  an  Eton  Master  I  spent  two  halves  in 
his  class.  He  seemed  to  be  equally  puzzled 
and  saddened  by  the  boisterous  boy  life  about 
him.  He  feebly  despised  their  games  as  they 
not  unfeebly  despised  his  poetry !  Though  an 
English  poet,  the  system  compelled  him  to 
teach  us  to  write  verses  in  dead  languages. 
He  used  to  sit  above  us  like  some  literary 
Prometheus  with  his  big,  bushy  head  bowed 
to  his  desk  by  the  system  which  prevented 
him  communicating  to  us  his  gift  of  divine 
fire.  He  left  Eton  to  edit  Queen  Victoria's 
letters.  I  have  wondered  whether  he  found 
the  Queen's  English  or  our  schoolboy  Latin 
the  more  tedious. 

It  was  hoped  he  would  succeed  Warre  as 
Head,  but  the  traditionalists  opposed  him, 
and  a  compromise  was  found  in  Edward 


42        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Lyttelton,  who  as  a  cricketer  and  a  vegetarian 
was  expected  to  satisfy  the  conservative  as 
well  as  the  advanced  men. 

Eton  punishments  were  as  prehistoric  as  the 
pillory.  Youths  of  an  age  that  would  be 
salaried  and  married  in  America  were  liable 
to  be  solemnly  held  down  on  a  wooden  block 
by  two  assistants  and  minutely  perforated 
with  a  birch  rod,  which  figured  for  seven  and 
sixpence  in  the  bill.  Mr.  Leigh,  the  Lower 
Master,  was  humorously  called  "The  Flea," 
because  he  generally  drew  blood  on  these 
occasions.  Only  the  blood  royal  was  exempt, 
but  Leigh  used  to  make  the  Duke  of  Albany 
sit  on  the  block  instead.  The  greatest  achieve- 
ment of  the  Beresfords  was  stealing  the  Eton 
block,  which  for  years  was  kept  at  their  seat 
at  Curraghmore. 

The  captains  used  canes  at  their  own  plea- 
sure. I  remember  peers'  sons  being  caned  in  a 
way  that  would  have  entailed  lawsuits  in  a 
board-school.  Only  the  convict  and  the  chil- 
dren of  the  rich  have  the  privilege  of  being 
flogged  in  England.  The  small  boys  are  liable 
to  menial  service.  Queen  Victoria  gave  orders 
for  her  grandsons  to  be  "fagged"  according  to 
custom.  In  my  time  the  fags  included  an 
Astor  and  a  Drexel,  for  family  names  do  not 


ETON   COLLEGE  43 

impress  Eton.  Eton  might  have  inquired  as 
innocently  as  King  Edward  of  a  shocked  Phil- 
adelphian:  "What  is  a  Biddle?" 

One  young  nobleman's  son  introduced  him- 
self as  Lord  C ,  son  of  Earl  C .  The 

whole  house  promptly  kicked  him  twice,  once 

for  Lord  C and  once  for  Earl  C .  This 

story  is  capped  from  Harrow,  where  a  for- 
eign prince  at  the  school  was  once  mentioned 
as  a  candidate  for  the  Spanish  throne.  The 
poor  boy  had  to  be  removed,  as  half  the  school 
took  the  necessary  steps  to  be  able  to  boast 
afterward  that  they  had  kicked  a  King  of 
Spain ! 

The  athlete  was  the  only  king  in  the  public- 
school  democracy.  The  prizes  of  youth  went 
to  the  strong.  Woe  to  the  weak  and  the  lag- 
gard !  Power  and  popularity  greeted  the 
rower,  the  runner,  and  the  cricketer.  Curiously 
enough,  military  proficiency  was  rated  low.  A 
boy  who  shot  for  the  school  at  Bisley  was  an 
inferior  being  to  one  who  rowed  at  Henley  or 
batted  at  Lord's.  The  school  volunteers  were 
called  "bug-shooters"  in  facetious  allusion  to 
their  manoeuvres  in  country  lanes.  This  pref- 
erence is  responsible  for  the  preponderance 
of  bravery  over  strategy  in  Eton  soldiers. 
Courage  to  die  is  still  admired -more  than  the 


44        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

cunning  which  entraps  a  foe.  But  the  end  of 
all  Samurai  is  extinction. 

It  was  noteworthy  that  a  Japanese  visitor 
asked  only  how  "the  spirit  of  Eton"  was 
taught.  It  was  the  spirit  not  letters  we  learned. 

The  Etonian  enters  the  world  with  a  work- 
ing code  of  honour  and  a  knowledge  of  gentle- 
manly conduct  in  the  rough  and  tumble  of  life. 
What  he  desires  of  art  or  music  or  literature 
he  must  glean  surreptitiously  for  himself.  It 
is  sad  to  think  of  Shelley  at  Eton  flying  from 
his  pursuers  like  a  baby  owl  mobbed  by  star- 
lings in  daylight. 

Eton  is  a  great  Aryan  as  well  as  English 
institution.  Reform  would  only  complete  the 
decay  which  has  been  caused  by  the  admission 
of  the  sons  of  Orientals,  financial  magnates, 
snobs,  and  swindlers.  The  sturdy  squirarchy 
who  compose  the  bulk  of  the  Eton  families 
have  been  swamped.  One  house  has  been 
recently  known  as  "the  Synagogue."  Win- 
chester, the  sister  school,  has  taken  the  pre- 
caution of  excluding  non-Christians.  Eton, 
in  a  generous  effort  to  keep  pace  with  the  Em- 
pire, has  become  as  cosmopolitan  as  English 
society. 

Eton  has  enjoyed  almost  a  monopoly,  how- 
ever, in  men  of  state  and  imperial  distinction — 


ETON  COLLEGE  45 

apart  from  men  of  genius,  which  Is  ambulatory 
like  the  Spirit,  and  not  necessarily  aristocratic. 

The  Etonian  is  the  most  marked  among  the 
types  that  spring  out  of  the  public  school. 
His  is  the  caste  composed  of  ruling  and  ad- 
venturous, half-educated  but  honourable  men. 
All  professions  accept  his  leadership  except 
journalism  and  stock- jobbing,  which  as  sub- 
sidiary to  literature  and  commerce  are  largely 
left  to  Celts  and  Jews.  In  other  professions 
he  makes  a  brilliant  mark,  even  in  art  and 
politics,  the  two  professions  giving  the  out- 
sider a  chance  to  reach  the  topmost  level  of 
society.  Men  who  are  not  public-school  men 
can  succeed  by  making  themselves  idols  in 
politics  or  smashing  idols  in  art — a  Disraeli 
or  a  Bernard  Shaw. 

Eton  has  naturally  produced  more  poets 
than  painters,  more  diplomatists  than  dem- 
agogues— but  there  are  few  Tory  cabinets  out 
of  which  she  cannot  man  a  rowing  eight ! 

The  war  has  tested  Eton  to  the  core,  and 
proven  that  "Etonesse  oblige."  In  an  aristo- 
cratic war  like  the  Boer  War  129  Etonians 
were  killed  out  of  the  1,400  who  fought.  In 
the  first  year  of  Europe's  war  368  fell  out  of 
2,558.  One  of  two  prints  hangs  in  every  Eto- 
nian's room,  the  "Sir  Galahad,"  which  Watts 


46        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

limned  for  the  school  chapel,  or  Lady  Butler's 
picture  of  an  Eton  officer  charging  deathward 
to  the  cry  of  "Flvreat  Etona!"  They  signify 
one  the  spiritual  and  the  other  the  carnal  war- 
fare, though  perhaps  a  strife  has  come  in  which 
they  seem  synonymous. 


THE  DYNASTY  OF  HANOVER 

To  the  English  their  dynasty  is  an  institution 
on  a  par  with  the  Church  or  the  Bank  of  Eng- 
land— consecrated  by  the  one,  paid  for  through 
the  other.  But  to  Eton,  the  owner  of  Windsor 
Castle  is  a  neighbour.  Eton  herself  is  royal 
and  her  chapel,  like  the  amphibious  Berwick- 
on-Tweed  (which  is  neither  English  nor  Scotch), 
needs  special  mention  in  the  state  prayer-book. 
Harrow  was  founded  by  a  yeoman,  Winchester 
by  a  bishop,  but  Eton  by  King  Henry  VI. 
Eton's  feast  is  the  4th  of  June — the  birthday 
of  the  simple-souled  George  III,  who  had  an 
affection  for  Eton.  To  this  day  every  Eton 
boy,  even  of  American  blood,  wears  a  mourn- 
ing-band round  his  hat  in  his  honour,  just  as 
bluejackets  still  wear  black  scarfs  for  Nelson. 
The  dynasty  of  Hanover  was  German,  and 
the  Teutonic  guttural  never  left  the  throats  of 
their  descendants.  For  constitutional  or  im- 
perial purposes  the  dynasty  proved  admirable. 
Yet,  both  George  I  and  George  II  were  aliens, 
who  had  achieved  nothing  besides  making 
Hanover  "a  coarse  Versailles."  Summoned  to 

47 


48        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

England,  they  initiated  with  some  reluctance 
that  long  epoch  of  comfort,  not  without  glory, 
from  which  the  Empire  really  dates.  If  their 
House  seemed  a  stupid  parody  of  the  An- 
tonines,  their  Empire  exceeded  the  bounds 
and  prosperity  of  the  Roman.  The  Georges 
changed  climate  but  not  manners.  They  con- 
sented good-naturedly  to  wallow  in  the  golden 
trough  provided  by  their  English  destiny. 
Thackeray  could  not  be  received  at  court  for 
describing  the  nature  of  their  wallowing. 
Nevertheless,  their  mediocrity  satisfied  Eng- 
land. George  I  was  only  a  stop-gap — a  peri- 
wigged scare-pope.  George  II  had  some  dapper 
bravery,  though  his  horse  bolted  with  him  on 
the  field  of  battle.  George  III  watched  with 
dull  piety  his  kingdom  swell  into  Empire  of 
the  world.  Yet  "Farmer"  George  saw  her 
through  her  death-struggle  with  Napoleon  be- 
fore he  died  of  imbecility  and  old  age.  George 
IV  was  a  pure  scamp,  and  William  IV  a  noodle. 
After  these  came  the  Victorian  era. 

Victoria  touched  constitutional  excellence, 
and  even  her  "bad"  Prince  of  Wales  hatched 
into  the  best  of  imperial  presidents.  Under 
Edward  VII  the  sovereign  became  almost  too 
popular,  for  it  is  an  unwritten  law  that  he 
should  not  absorb  the  sentiment  due  to  his 


THE  DYNASTY  OF  HANOVER     49 

ministers,  who  cannot  run  the  King's  business 
otherwise.  It  was  a  relief  to  some  when  his 
dictatorship  of  tact  was  succeeded  by  George 
V.  England's  ideal  is  to  hail  her  own  common 
multiple  of  qualities  on  the  throne. 

Of  Victoria  who  shall  speak?  Already  she 
is  a  myth  and  a  legend,  like  Queen  Elizabeth 
and  Florence  Nightingale.  Diva  Victoria. 

She  was  unspoiled  and  unimaginative,  with 
a  genuine  gentleness,  which  in  the  eyes  of  the 
people  assumed  the  aspect  of  a  halo,  and  with 
touches  of  prejudice  and  severity,  which  sim- 
ilarly passed  for  wisdom.  Her  etiquette  was 
pedantic.  She  kept  her  mother  standing  in 
her  presence,  and  dismissed  a  venerable  lord- 
in-waiting  for  slumbering  on  duty.  When  an 
unhappy  officer  of  the  Guard  once  risked  a 
slightly  improper  story  at  her  table  she  in- 
sisted on  its  repetition  and  remarked  in  the 
icy  silence  which  followed:  "We  are  not 
amused!"  Her  era  was  moral.  Her  own 
family  were  awestruck  of  her,  but  she  showed 
herself  big-hearted  to  fallen  sovereigns  and 
worthless  old  servants.  She  repaired  the  tomb 
of  the  last  Stuart  King  in  France  and  welcomed 
the  last  Napoleon  to  England.  To  a  Scotch 
gilly,  John  Brown,  she  extended  real  favour, 
and  even  consulted  him  on  public  affairs. ...  He 


50        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

was  a  rough-grained  fellow,  complaisant  when 
sober  and  rude  to  the  Queen  when  drunk.  He 
became  the  aversion  of  the  royal  family  and 
ministers  of  state.  It  was  a  good  day  for 
them  when  they  could  all  join  in  singing 
"John  Brown's  body  lies  a-mouldering  in  the 
grave" — though  the  Queen  mourned. 

However,  she  wrote  an  epitaph  for  his 
memory  surpassing  what  she  had  written  for 
Disraeli.  Disraeli,  according  to  the  royal  pen, 
was  "a  dear  and  honoured  memory,"  but 
John  Brown  was  "God's  own  gift." 

The  reign  of  Victoria  was  an  era  in  itself. 
She  was  lifted,  before  she  died,  to  the  summit 
of  a  wave  in  world  history,  which  she  had 
mounted  as  a  graceful  girl.  She  became  Eng- 
land's fairy  godmother.  She  waved  her  sceptre 
in  odd  corners  of  the  earth  like  a  wand  and 
they  became  hers.  Under  the  shadow  of  her 
throne  rose  the  Victorians — two  generations 
of  statesmen,  soldiers,  poets,  and  divines. 
Individually  they  were  not  as  brilliant  as  the 
Elizabethans,  but  they  were  more  continuously 
remarkable.  It  was  something  that  early  Vic- 
torians could  hail  a  day  when  they  saw  "a 
Newman  mould  the  church  and  Gladstone 
stamp  the  state."  Prosperous  times  had  set 
in  at  home  tempered  only  by  thrills  of  minor 


THE  DYNASTY  OF  HANOVER     51 

disaster  on  the  far-away  frontiers  abroad.  The 
conditions  produced  a  supply  of  great  men. 
After  Victoria  the  mould  broke.  The  great 
Victorians  died  off  in  the  nineties.  Only  the 
charlatan-prophets  Ruskin  and  Chamberlain 
survived  painfully  into  the  new  century  to  see 
the  failure  of  their  missions.  Ruskin  could  not 
make  the  English  see  artistically,  and  Cham- 
berlain could  not  make  them  think  imperially. 
The  middle  class  out  of  which  they  sprang  re- 
jected them  both. 

Privately  and  publicly  Victoria  rejoiced 
her  people.  She  was  high-minded  and  stopped 
her  ministers — even  the  Duke  of  Wellington — 
from  swearing.  Presentation  at  her  court  be- 
came a  certificate  in  domestic  morals.  The 
light  of  her  countenance  was  withdrawn  from 
sinners  who  married  their  deceased  wives* 
sisters.  She  drove  Valentine  Baker,  her  best 
cavalry  officer,  out  of  the  army  for  moral  mis- 
conduct. He  continued  his  career — where 
men's  motives  are  better  consulted— as  a 
Turkish  pasha !  She  pressed  the  political 
ostracism  of  Dilke  after  his  divorce  trial,  and 
marked  his  prosecutor  Lord  Llandaff  for  pro- 
motion. 

She  married  Albert  "the  Good,"  an 
Evangelical  German  who  introduced  the 


52        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Christmas  trees  into  England,  whereby  toy- 
makers  in  the  Fatherland  have  since  grown 
rich.  He  was  pure,  dreamy,  and  peace-loving. 
He  invented  Exhibitions  and  with  difficulty 
persuaded  the  English  to  accept  the  success 
of  1851.  The  English  disliked  him  because 
he  was  no  sportsman,  though  the  Queen  to 
his  great  distress  made  him  wear  a  kilt  in  the 
Highlands.  He  convinced  the  Queen  that 
England  must  never  go  to  war  with  Germany. 
The  slightest  anti-German  policy  he  considered 
"wickedness."  She  came  to  regard  the  sup- 
port of  Prussia  as  a  "  holy  duty."  He  must 
share  the  credit  with  Mr.  Adams  of  once 
averting  war  with  America.  In  private  life  he 
gave  the  example  of  the  large  family  just  as 
it  was  being  discarded  by  the  upper  classes. 
When  he  stood  for  the  Cambridge  chancel- 
lorship, mocking  placards  were  issued:  "Vote 
for  Albert— five  children!"  The  English 
laughed  at  him  until  his  tragic  death,  when 
widow  and  nation  combined  to  erect  a  memo- 
rial in  consummate  Gotho-Germanic  vulgarity. 
The  Albert  Memorial  with  its  clumsy  statuary 
surmounted  by  an  image  of  brass  topped  by 
cross  and  canopy  was  not  the  souvenir  of  an 
unassuming  prince,  but  the  symbol  of  a  com- 
meVcial  age.  At  Windsor  his  room  was  pre- 


THE  DYNASTY  OF  HANOVER     53 

served  as  he  left  it — the  hat  and  stick,  and 
other  possessions  in  grim  and  dusty  repose. 
Victoria  and  Albert  were  always  spoken  of 
privately  by  their  ministers  as  "Eliza"  and 
"Joseph."  Lord  Halifax  told  me  "Eliza"  was 
coined  by  Dean  Wellesley  in  order  to  be  able 
to  refer  to  the  Queen  in  her  presence.  But 
Albert  was  her  only  love,  and  there  is  a  pa- 
thetic tale  of  "the  Widow  of  Windsor"  travel- 
ling abroad  and  halting  her  journey  to  kiss 
the  keys  of  an  organ  which  he  had  once  played 
as  a  young  man. 

To  have  seen  the  old  Queen  is  becoming  a 
memory.  She  often  drove  through  Eton,  and 
when  she  died,  the  school  was  given  the  honour 
of  lining  the  last  lap  within  the  castle  gates 
at  her  final  home-coming.  For  days  we  were 
marshalled  in  the  playing-fields.  The  school 
Volunteers  formed  a  thin  grey  line  on  either 
side  of  the  road  backed  by  the  rest  of  the 
school,  while  a  derelict  cab  passed  solemnly 
up  and  down  in  guise  of  a  hearse — not  without 
some  groaning  laughter.  Death  is  only  less 
ridiculous  than  old  age  to  Youth.  The  great 
day  brought  the  usual  mishaps  inherent  to 
British  organisation.  The  royal  horses  shied 
at  the  station,  and  the  new  King  called  on  a 
squad  of  bluejackets  to  draw  the  gun-car- 


54        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

riage  through  Windsor.  It  was  a  solemn 
moment  when  we  caught  sight  of  the  sailors 
bending  on  then*  improvised  ropes — the  tiny 
coffin — and  the  galaxy  of  Kings. 

In  the  exciteinent  some  of  our  Volunteers 
forgot  to  reverse  their  arms.  Generals  on 
either  side  of  the  coffin  whispered  hoarsely: 
"Reverse!" — which  the  delinquents  obeyed 
too  late  and  in  windmill  fashion,  almost 
striking  heads  in  the  procession.  A  few  sec- 
onds later  King  and  Kaiser  were  passing.  I 
do  not  know  if  the  eyes  of  the  German  war- 
lord caught  our  fiasco.  He  was  walking  with 
our  schoolmate  Albany,  who  had  become  his 
subject  as  Duke  of  Gotha. 

Albany  had  been  as  much  chaffed  in  the 
school  for  becoming  a  German  duke  as  Ar- 
thur of  Connaught  had  been  praised  for  his 
refusal.  That  Prince  Arthur  refused  40,000 
pounds  a  year  and  preferred  to  remain  an  Eng- 
lish officer  on  a  pittance  strengthened  the  dy- 
nasty. When  Albany  became  Gotha  his  Eton 
friends  performed  a  mock  goose-step  in  his 
honour,  reducing  him  to  tears.  The  next  year 
he  returned  for  the  Queen's  funeral.  As  he 
passed,  he  pointed  out  the  Eton  boys  to  the 
Kaiser.  For  a  moment  that  keen,  restless  eye 
shot  down  our  unmilitary  ranks,  as  his  un- 


THE  DYNASTY  OF  HANOVER     55 

withered  arm  covered  us  with  a  jerk.  Few  of 
the  boys  standing  there  that  day  in  Eton  suits 
have  not  since  met  his  legions  in  battle. 

The  Kaiser  must  be  included  in  the  dynasty, 
for,  as  an  Irish  genealogist  has  pointed  out,  if 
his  mother  had  been  a  boy,  he  would  be  King 
of  England !  The  cross  between  Anglo-Han- 
overian imperialism  and  Prussian  religio- 
militarism  has  proved  pregnant.  Genius  it 
has  produced  in  the  Kaiser,  not  without  a 
Neronian  touch,  as  shown  in  his  hatred  for 
his  mother  and  the  false  pride  that  plays  be- 
fore a  burning  world.  He  was  always  an 
enfant  terrible.  The  Duke  of  Connaught  tells 
how  the  future  Kaiser  was  intrusted  to  him 
at  Edward  VTTs  wedding  in  the  sixties.  The 
duke  wore  a  kilt  over  his  bare  knee.  Half- 
way through  the  service  he  found  his  amiable 
young  nephew  had  crawled  low  and  bitten 
him  on  the  bare ! 

The  Kaiser  grew  to  be  a  neurotic  dreamer, 
ill  content  with  a  safe  throne,  nervously  con- 
scious of  the  conquests  and  destinies  that 
only  awaited  his  invocation.  Hence,  the 
alarms  and  excursions  with  which  he  troubled 
his  English  relatives.  While  Victoria  lived 
he  only  dared  manifest  himself  by  telegram. 
Between  him  and  Edward,  however,  there 


56        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

grew  a  cordial  hatred.  Yet  it  must  be  admitted 
that  he  staved  off  the  evil  day  as  often  as  it 
was  conjured  up  in  his  name  by  the  Junkers. 
One  true  story  may  be  given. 

A  few  years  back  an  English  ironclad 
bearing  English  royalty  unwittingly  passed 
through  the  Kaiser's  regatta  at  Kiel.  To  the 
amazement  of  the  imperial  staff  the  stranger 
passed  without  preferring  a  salute.  The  Eng- 
lish had  not  suspected  the  Kaiser's  presence, 
and  were  more  than  astonished  to  be  followed 
and  boarded  by  the  indignant  Kaiser  in  per- 
son. What  astonished  them  more  was  that 
he  wore  yachting  shoes  under  his  naval  uni- 
form. It  was  not  explained  till  afterward 
that  rather  than  receive  an  accidental  insult 
before  his  captains,  the  Kaiser  had  scrambled 
into  uniform  and  gone  out  of  his  way  to  ex- 
tract sufficient  courtesy  from  his  relative  to 
save  appearances.  In  his  hurry  he  had  for- 
gotten to  change  his  shoes! 

Another  age  must  judge  the  Kaiser.  His- 
tory alone  can  tell  what  his  share  has  been. 
It  is  at  least  a  little  grotesque  to  call  him 
"Antichrist."  Surely  it  were  an  anticlimax 
for  Queen  Victoria  to  have  been  grandmother 
to  Antichrist ! 

By   the   time   Edward   succeeded   Victoria 


THE  DYNASTY  OF  HANOVER     57 

there  seemed  not  much  left  to  be  done.  He 
had  always  been  kept  out  of  politics  by  his 
mother,  who  showed  a  curious  jealousy  in  not 
allowing  him  to  succeed  to  any  of  his  father's 
orders  or  positions.  England's  greatness  at 
home  could  not  be  repeated,  so  Edward  turned 
his  mind  to  diplomacy  abroad.  Under  his 
auspices  as  peacemaker,  Europe  was  brought 
into  that  state  of  tranquil  balance  which  al- 
ways precedes  a  war.  It  is  while  alliances  are 
uncertain  and  the  dispositions  of  nations  un- 
pledged that  peace  is  kept.  The  gamble  of 
war  remains  too  incalculable. 

Strong  dispositions  breed  calculations  and 
calculations  turn  into  challenges.  Strong  rul- 
ers control  national  dispositions  and  weak 
ones  cannot  control  challenges.  Edward  was 
neither,  but  he  tried  nobly  to  corner  the  ris- 
ing maelstrom.  But  who  can  square  the  circle 
of  Fate? 

It  fell  to  Edward  to  choose  a  good  under- 
standing with  Germany  or  France.  He  pre- 
ferred the  latter.  Trivial  but  world-changing 
influences  affected  his  decision.  By  a  strange 
irony  Prince  Albert's  Teutonic  discipline  had 
driven  him  as  a  young  man  for  consolation 
to  the  Parisians.  There  was  the  unforgiveness 
of  his  Danish  Queen  toward  Prussia.  There 


58        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

was  the  fate  which  embittered  his  sister,  the 
Kaiser's  mother.  There  was  the  Kaiser's  dis- 
courteous request  not  to  bring  "his  grocer 
friend"  in  his  suite.  Above  all,  there  was  the 
growing  distrust  for  Germany,  which  he  was 
quick  to  scent  among  the  upper  classes,  to 
buoy  him  in  proffering  his  historic  embraces 
to  France. 

I  was  in  France  during  the  Boer  War  and 
during  Edward's  visit  to  Paris.  During  1901 
even  appeals  to  "Fontenoy"  did  not  prevent 
an  Irishman  being  stoned  for  English.  In 
those  days  "Chamberlain  Assassin!"  was  the 
chant  of  the  boulevards,  and  the  suicide  of 
Kitchener  the  perennial  topic  of  the  cafes. 
Two  years  later  I  found  myself  with  a  crowd 
of  students  from  the  Latin  Quarter  watching 
Edward  and  Pere  Loubet  whirling  to  the 
Theatre  Frangais  in  a  brougham  fenced  by  a 
regiment  of  horse-tail-helmeted  cuirassiers.  It 
seemed  a  pretty  pageant  to  us — the  entente 
going  to  the  play!  None  of  us  realised  at  the 
time  that  it  was  the  car  of  Destiny  we  had 
watched  encircled  by  long-haired  furies,  un- 
der whose  wheels  the  generation  to  which  we 
belonged  was  doomed  to  perish.  None  are 
blinder  than  those  who  live  in  the  white  light 
of  history  before  it  has  been  caught  and  dis- 


THE  DYNASTY  OF  HANOVER     59 

sected  on  the  spectroscope  of  the  historian.  A 
similar  fate  awaited  Paris  students  and  Eton 
boys:  1914  found  them  both  of  cannonable 
age! 

The  reign  of  Victoria  was  an  epoch,  but 
Edward's  was  epoch-breaking.  Yet  he  only 
set  out  to  be  a  citizen-King,  until  everybody 
came  to  regard  him  as  a  personal  friend — 
"Europe's  Uncle"  the  French  called  him. 
He  recognised  Labour  members  at  Windsor, 
and  he  issued  a  proclamation  in  green  to  the 
Irish.  He  was  anxious  to  sign  a  Home  Rule 
Bill.  He  received  "General"  Booth,  which 
was  as  startling  on  the  part  of  the  Faith's 
Defender  to  the  High  Church  Tories  as  in 
another  way  Roosevelt's  reception  of  Booker 
Washington  in  the  White  House.  He  tried 
to  omit  the  anti-Catholic  oath  at  his  corona- 
tion. He  made  a  success  of  racing,  and  he 
advanced  the  German  Ghetto  to  court. 

In  the  end  he  came  to  be  considered  a 
sportsman  among  sportsmen,  a  Catholic  sym- 
pathiser by  Catholics,  "saved"  by  Salvation- 
ists, and  a  democrat  by  the  Labourites.  Among 
the  Irish,  whom  he  had  offended  on  his  visit 
as  Prince  of  Wales  by  wearing  Masonic  regalia, 
there  was  a  distinct  movement  "to  capture 
the  King,"  before  he  captured  them!  Loyal 


60        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Orangemen  signalised  his  visit  by  chalking 
"Popish  Ned"  on  the  walls  of  Deny.  The 
Jews  found  themselves  in  clover.  Sir  Ernest 
Cassel,  who  shared  the  King's  mentality  to  a 
curious  degree,  entered  the  Privy  Council,  and 
was  generally  honoured  for  his  discretion. 
The  society  dancer  who  demanded  his  head 
on  a  charger  after  giving  an  exhibition  before 
the  King  represented  no  popular  feeling. 

Sir  Ernest  remained  a  lonely  but  dignified 
figure  among  his  Van  Dykes  in  Brook  House. 
In  mediaeval  times  he  would  have  financed 
Cathedrals.  As  it  was  he  endowed  a  great 
Sanatorium. 

From  the  wisdom  of  the  business  men  and 
the  wit  of  the  women  whom  he  chose  for  his 
friends  King  Edward  learnt  how  to  rule.  He 
was  tolerant  of  all  men  including  himself. 
He  might  have  been  reckoned  incapable  of 
rule  unless  he  had  ruled.  "Incapax  imperil 
nisi  imper asset." 

But  Edward's  popularity  never  waned. 
Even  the  Nonconformists  who  had  scourged 
his  princely  vices  were  reconciled  by  his 
kingly  furtherance  of  peace.  To  a  nation  of 
shopkeepers  Edward  "the  peacemaker"  seemed 
a  national  insurance.  And  all  this  success 
was  due  to  the  tact  which  allowed  him  to  be- 
come all  things  to  all  men  without  endangering 


THE  DYNASTY  OF  HANOVER     61 

his  own  dignity.  Tact  is  the  gift  of  doing  the 
right  thing  in  place  of  the  obvious.  When 
an  Eastern  prince,  whom  he  was  entertain- 
ing, threw  a  sucked  gooseberry  skin  over  his 
shoulder,  Edward  promptly  filled  an  awkward 
pause  by  doing  likewise.  When  the  French 
aldermen  visited  Windsor,  he  had  the  name  of 
the  Waterloo  Gallery  changed  for  the  day. 
Edward  appreciated  tact  in  others.  When  he 
visited  the  Catholic  seminary  at  Maynooth, 
he  understood  that  Union  Jacks  would  be  a 
forced  offering  from  Irish  Nationalists,  and 
was  delighted  to  find  his  attiring-room  deco- 
rated instead  with  pictures  of  his  own  race- 
horses— a  sincere  tribute  from  a  horse-loving 
race! 

A  good  instance  of  tact  may  be  mentioned 
in  connection  with  Maynooth.  The  martyred 
Empress  of  Austria  when  hunting  in  Ireland 
once  found  herself  within  the  seminary  grounds. 
The  president,  Archbishop  Walsh,  welcomed 
her,  and,  noticing  that  she  seemed  a  little  em- 
barrassed at  moving  booted  and  spurred  among 
doctors  of  divinity,  chivalrously  offered  a  loan 
of  his  gown,  clad  in  which  she  continued  her 
visit.  Her  return  offering  was  not  so  tactful, 
for  she  presented  the  Hibernian  College  with 
a  silver  St.  George ! 

Edward  was  a  go-between  rather  than  a 


62        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

statesman,  a  conversationalist  rather  than  a 
man  of  letters.  But  he  was  the  only  diplo- 
matist in  the  public  service.  His  reading  was 
limited.  Lady  Sarah  Spencer  told  me  that  she 
used  to  read  to  Gladstone  in  his  old  age.  One 
day  while  reading  Southey,  the  Prince  of 
Wales  called  and  insisted  on  Gladstone  read- 
ing a  book  which  he  rated  very  high.  It  was 
Marie  Corelli's  BarabbasU  They  decided  to 
give  the  royal  choice  a  trial.  After  an  hour's 
reading,  Gladstone  uttered  one  word  by  way 
of  comment:  "Southey!" 

Edward  had  keener  perception  for  men 
than  books.  It  is  history  how  he  tacitly 
dropped  the  absurd  "divine  right  of  Kings" 
with  all  its  sentimental  superstition  and  prac- 
tical limitations.  He  preferred  to  wear  the 
unassailable  mantle  of  a  modern  president. 
He  was  certainly  a  better  Republican  than 
many  of  the  Americans  who  thronged  his 
court.  He  lived  like  an  epicurean  and  died 
like  a  stoic.  Neither  devil  nor  doctor  could 
affright  him  much.  His  sudden  death  left  a 
pang  of  remorse  such  as  no  world  ruler  had 
left  since  the  Emperor  Titus. 

The  parallel  between  the  two  has  not  been 
noticed.  Each  succeeded  to  a  so-called  Au- 
gustan age,  and  ruled  over  an  Empire  which 


THE  DYNASTY  OF  HANOVER     63 

was  settling  into  comfortable  stagnation.  Each 
was  accused  of  indulging  in  revelry  before  suc- 
ceeding to  the  throne,  and  each  seemed  to 
die  untimely  for  the  happiness  of  the  world. 
There  went  out  a  feeling  among  Edward's 
subjects  akin  to  the  sentiment  which  used  to 
prompt  the  deification  of  the  Roman  rulers. 

Among  Catholics  a  myth  arose  that  so  good 
a  King  could  only  have  died  in  the  communion 
of  the  Church.  It  was  rumoured  that  he  had 
returned  in  his  last  illness  not  from  Biarritz 
but  from  Lourdes  hard  by.  A  nun  in  the 
Midlands  was  reported  to  have  seen  his  soul 
in  the  purgatory  of  the  just !  Certain  it  is  that 
good  Protestants  watched  Father  Vaughan 
a  little  anxiously  during  those  last  days ! 
When  the  Tablet  published  a  photograph  of 
King  Edward  with  Father  Vaughan  there 
was  a  slight  emeute  in  Buckingham  Palace. 

George  V  caused  no  anxiety  to  Protestants. 
Blameless  and  unimaginative,  he  filled  the 
requisition  form  of  an  English  sovereign.  He 
proved  a  sedative  in  feverish  times.  He  had 
none  of  his  father's  ambition  to  rearrange  Eu- 
rope. He  collected  postage-stamps  in  pref- 
erence to  racing-cups,  and  drew  a  keener  eye 
on  pheasants  than  on  women.  The  middle 
classes  welcomed  him,  and  the  lower  ones  had 


64        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

no  apprehensions.  The  upper  class,  who  were 
beginning  to  play  at  decadence,  smiled  at 
his  domestic  virtues.  A  moral  king  is  always 
a  subject  of  ridicule.  A  king  who  tries  to  do 
his  duty  never  raises  that  sentiment  which  ac- 
crues to  selfish  brilliance  and  even  gallantry. 
Henry  VIII  remains  the  most  popular  of  Eng- 
lish monarchs.  Fate  has  not  been  kind  to 
George  V.  For  the  sake  of  the  dynasty  he  en- 
deavoured to  win  the  Derby,  but  "all  the 
King's  horses"  were  unavailing.  He  went  to 
the  army  and  navy  boxing  instead  of  the  first 
production  of  "Parsival,"  when  it  was  ru- 
moured shocking  to  the  Nonconformists.  He 
tried  to  be  a  constitutional  monarch,  but  only 
produced  an  outburst  in  the  House.  A  well- 
intentioned  effort  to  settle  the  Irish  question 
led  to  a  deadlock.  Civil  war  threatened,  and 
was  only  prevented  by  universal  war.  The 
conflict  of  Armageddon  eddied  around  his 
throne,  and  he  uttered  well-chosen  words  and 
performed  appropriate  actions,  though  he  saw 
the  Guards  off  to  annihilation  in  France  wear- 
ing a  frock  coat  and  top-hat.  He  became  a 
teetotaller,  but  his  subjects  left  him  stranded 
"dry."  Throughout  his  reign  he  has  showed 
himself  the  type  intended  by  the  settlement — 
a  patriot  King  under  Whig  domination. 


THE  DYNASTY  OF  HANOVER     65 

Yet  it  is  unfair  to  judge  him  as  critically 
and  harshly  as  some  subjects  have  taken  upon 
themselves  to  do.  Alone  of  his  statesmen  and 
generals  he  has  made  no  blunders.  He  stands 
an  unchanging  and  homely  figure  in  the  strife. 
His  throne  remains  the  safest  if  not,  in  view 
of  Belgium,  the  most  glorious  in  Europe.  In 
contrast  to  the  Kaiser's  feverish  omnipresence, 
his  calm  passivity  is  a  steady  guidance  if  not 
a  wild  inspiration  to  the  Empire. 

Before  the  war  Englishmen  believed  in  four 
things:  a  powerless  throne,  a  powerful  navy, 
the  diplomacy  of  Sir  Edward  Grey,  and  their 
form  of  democracy.  The  scene  of  Grey's  tri- 
umphs has  become  the  scene  of  British  disas- 
ters. The  fruits  of  democracy  have  proved 
unappetising  in  war  time.  The  navy  and  the 
throne  remain  as  sheet-anchors  to  public  hope. 
George  V  has,  by  his  unchanging  calm  and 
refusal  to  bow  before  fear  or  imagination, 
proved  the  fibre  which  resists  the  strain  in 
the  public  mind.  It  is  possible  that  he  has 
those  needful  qualities,  which  could  not  be 
expected  from  a  more  brilliant  sovereign — 
the  qualities  of  stolid  patience  and  imperturb- 
able phlegm.  The  elements  of  royal  greatness 
are  not  all  glittering  nor  necessarily  such  as 
chroniclers  prefer  to  chronicle.  It  is  something 


66        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

that  a  most  English  type  of  Englishman  sits 
upon  the  throne  in  unstable  days. 

George  III  amused  his  subjects  by  his  in- 
ability to  discover  how  the  apple  entered  the 
dumpling,  but  he  saw  Napoleon  dumped  on 
St.  Helena.  George  V  may  rouse  his  subjects' 
mirth,  but  he  is  their  best  figurehead  sailing 
through  the  waters  of  Armageddon. 

A  curious  passage  in  Carlyle's  Frederick 
the  Great  recalls  as  an  obstacle  to  Prussian 
plans — "  Britannic  George."  "  Suppose  your 
Britannic  Majesty,"  quoth  Frederick,  "would 
make  with  me  an  express  neutrality  conven- 
tion ?  "  But  he  wouldn't.  History  often  re- 
peats. 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY 

THE  atmosphere  of  the  University  in  England 
is  indefinable.  Oxford  and  Cambridge  are 
microcosms  of  national  history.  Tradition 
and  freedom  mingle  through  their  precincts. 
To  the  powers  "that  are"  they  are  obsequious 
only  in  the  choice  of  their  Chancellors,  who  are 
dukes  at  least.  When  Wellington  was  made 
Cambridge  Chancellor,  Archbishop  Whately 
had  the  spirit  to  apply  for  the  command  of 
the  Horse  Guards.  The  Universities  may  ap- 
preciate royal  favour  like  the  sunshine,  but 
there  is  no  sun-worship.  An  English  University 
is  its  own  universe. 

The  University  is  the  only  time  and  place 
in  the  lives  of  Englishmen  when  they  show 
their  emotions.  Faith  and  scepticism,  enthu- 
siasm and  cynicism  bear  sway  among  the 
young  men.  The  undergraduate  has  a  license 
to  practise  his  real  self.  As  a  rule,  he  regrets 
the  experiment  and  slips  into  one  of  the  con- 
ventional grooves  prepared  for  him.  Only 
the  idealist  continues  to  be  an  undergradu- 
ate through  life.  The  English  environment  is 

67 


68        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

one  which  brings  rockets  to  dark  earth.  The 
torches  of  English  civilisation  are  safety-lamps 
which  warm  without  consuming  their  carriers. 
They  are  passed  on  by  one  generation  of 
common-sensed  officials  all  over  the  Empire  to 
another.  They  are  cherished  at  home  by  a 
semi-athletic  caste  of  clergy  and  half-humor- 
ous types  of  lawyer  and  legislator — in  other 
words  the  University  class.  By  such  the  Em- 
pire is  managed  if  not  uplifted — as  a  depart- 
ment store  rather  than  as  a  spiritual  force. 
The  cream  of  University  men  includes  the 
educated  part  of  the  upper  and  the  upper  part 
of  the  educated  class.  These  men  reach  suc- 
cess and  honour.  Everybody  who  is  not  in 
the  University  class  had  better  be  a  duke  or  a 
salesman,  who  can  both  afford  to  be  without 
a  degree. 

The  colleges  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
form  a  mosaic  of  English  history.  If  they  are 
winged  by  modern  science  they  are  also 
weighted  with  tradition.  They  are  demo- 
cratic unto  themselves,  but  their  tendency  is 
to  make  a  caste.  The  experiment  of  bringing 
Rhodes  scholars  from  all  over  the  world  to 
Oxford  or  Indian  babus  to  Cambridge  is  doubt- 
ful. The  colonials  are  better  for  their  own 
colleges  instead  of  learning  to  imitate  English 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         69 

sportsmen.  The  Indians  are  the  worse  for 
being  educated  as  an  equal  race  in  England  by 
way  of  prelude  to  being  ruled  as  an  inferior 
one  in  India.  I  recall  an  Indian  at  Cam- 
bridge saying: 

"  In  India  I  was  taught  that  white  'men  and  women  were 
sacred.  But  for  three  years  here  I  have  been  cadged  by  Eng- 
lish porters  and  prostitutes  for  the  price  of  beer." 

A  few  more  sentimental  mistakes,  and 
Oxford  and  Cambridge  will  pass  like  old  Eng- 
lish boxing  and  London  society  itself  into  the 
shadowy  vale  of  cosmopolitanism. 

The  education  at  the  University  is  more  in- 
telligent than  scientific.  The  individual  is  al- 
lowed to  develop  by  himself  even  at  the  hazard 
of  indolence.  Facilities  are  afforded,  but  no 
system  is  imposed.  A  man  may  accept  the 
facilities  and  make  the  best  of  them,  or  he 
may  start  a  new  school.  There  are  no  official 
schools  of  thought.  Anybody  is  only  too  wel- 
come who  will  think  at  all.  I  have  known  no 
Cambridge  teacher  not  to  confess  that  the  Ger- 
man training  was  more  up-to-date  and  or- 
ganised. Provincial  Universities  like  Leeds 
and  Liverpool  are  more  practical.  London 
University  is  far  more  thorough.  The  German 
University  is  a  grinding-mill  compared  to  the 


70        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

loose-flowing  moulds  at  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge. 

Oxford  and  Cambridge!  Quis  separabit? 
They  are  the  sacred  twins  suckled  by  one 
alma  mater.  They  have  set  the  tone  of  Eng- 
lish life,  and  embalmed  every  phase  and  period 
of  her  history.  It  is  difficult  to  state  the  real 
difference  between  the  rivals.  It  is  a  divine 
truth  that  Cambridge  men  are  Aristotelians 
and  Oxford  men  Platonists.  Cambridge  is 
scientific  where  Oxford  is  mediaeval.  If  Ox- 
ford is  called  "the  home  of  lost  causes,"  the 
Cambridge  of  Newton,  Harvey,  and  Darwin 
has  some  claim  to  be  the  home  of  discovered 
ones.  Yet,  curiously  enough,  the  whole  stock 
of  English  poetry  flows  from  Cambridge — 
Chaucer,  Milton,  Spenser,  Gray,  Wordsworth, 
Byron,  Tennyson !  Oxford  can  only  point  to 
a  solitary  Shelley,  whom  she  was  careful  to 
expel  for  atheism ! 

But  Oxford's  bead-roll  is  in  religion.  Cam- 
bridge cannot  match  Grossetete,  Wolsey,  Wes- 
ley, Keble,  Manning,  and  Newman.  Alone 
among  northern  Universities  Oxford  begat  a 
Pope — the  Cretan  Alexander  V,  whom  envious 
Cambridge  men  insist  to  have  been  the  Sixth 
of  that  name. 

The   Universities   keep    the   old    tradition. 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         71 

With  responsive  spirits  they  leave  a  perennial 
influence,  which  without  being  philosophical 
or  sentimental  has  proved  the  seed-ground  of 
all  that  is  most  generous  in  English  life. 
Against  backgrounds  that  are  material  and 
uninspired  the  University  for  ever  points  to 
higher  and  nobler  ideals.  Every  Varsity  man 
carries  away  in  some  measure  amongst  the 
husks  of  knowledge  the  certainty  that  there 
are  less  things  saleable  in  heaven  and  earth 
than  the  advocates  of  sound  commercial  edu- 
cation would  suppose. 

Oxford  is  only  a  street  that  is  not  straight, 
winding  under  a  canopy  of  towers  and  bells, 
but  saint  and  cavalier,  scholar  and  adven- 
turer have  trodden  and  loved  it  above  the 
broadways  of  all  the  world.  Cambridge  is 
only  an  ecclesiastical  hamlet  planted  on  a 
fenland  brook,  but  all  the  poets  of  England 
have  watched  their  youth  slip  by  with  its 
muddy  stream.  From  Cambridge,  too,  came 
the  poet  of  the  Great  War. 

I  was  at  King's  College,  Cambridge  (1904- 
8).  King's  was  considered  by  affectionate 
King's  men  as  "The  Cambridge  Balliol." 
Candid  friends  considered  it  "Balliol  without 
Balliol  men."  There  was  some  truth  in  the 
saying,  which  confirmed  another  to  the  effect 


72        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

that  modern  Cambridge  has  been  "the  grave 
of  genius." 

The  men  of  Balliol  have  obtained  an  un- 
canny share  of  success  even  among  Oxford 
men.  Jowett,  their  great  Master,  seemed  to 
be  able  to  stamp  his  pupils  with  intellectual 
efficiency  in  class  followed  by  an  effortless 
superiority  when  they  entered  the  world. 
His  pupils  included  Milner,  Curzon,  Lans- 
downe,  Grey,  Asquith.  The  Balliol  type  suc- 
ceeded because  it  did  not  pitch  its  ideal  too 
high.  Self-sufficient  and  self-supporting,  their 
combined  advance  in  church  and  state  cul- 
minated in  the  hour  that  Premier  Asquith 
gave  Cosmo  Lang  the  Archbishopric  of  York. 
The  age  which  reverenced  the  Balliol  ideal  ap- 
proved the  transaction.  A  day  was  to  come 
testing  that  ideal  by  trial,  not  as  before  by 
success.  Balliol  stands  or  falls  by  Asquith's 
premiership. 

King's  was  very  different.  We  were  as  in- 
tellectual and  our  Greek  scholarship  was  better 
— but  we  had  not  produced  a  great  man  since 
Sir  Robert  Walpole — excepting,  perhaps,  Strat- 
ford de  Redcliffe,  "the  great  Eltchi,"  and  the 
disastrous  pride  which  led  to  the  Crimea  and 
a  pro-Turkish  policy.  King's  men  were  less 
practical  and  more  abstract  than  Balliol  men. 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         73 

The  type  has  been  sketched  by  one  of  their 
number,  Mr.  Wingfield  Stratford: 

He  has  studied  Socialism  with  Plato  and  heresy  with  the 
Fathers;  he  has  found  the  higher  thought  in  the  valleys  of  the 
Yang-tee,  and  evolution  on  the  shores  of  the  ^Egean.  Though 
a  fighter  and  an  idealist,  the  catchwords  of  clique  and  party 
leave  him  cold  .  .  .  too  responsive  to  genius  to  miss  any  spark 
of  it  in  a  contemporary  or  an  opponent,  he  is  at  once  the  fair- 
est and  most  redoubtable  of  controversialists. 

This  well  expresses  the  secret  and  the  cause 
of  Cambridge  thinking.  Cambridge  men  can- 
not or  will  not  join  or  form  parties.  Oxford 
men,  however,  have  incarnated  their  genius 
in  religious  movements,  such  as  Wesley's  or 
Newman's,  or  in  influences  upon  the  civil 
body  like  Matthew  Arnold's  or  Jowett's. 
The  Cambridge  genius  always  tended  to  a 
higher  abstract  thought,  that  slipped  beyond 
theology  and  above  patriotism.  These  were 
left  to  Oxford.  Oxford  stood  loyally  by  the 
Stuarts  and  she  professes  religious  orthodoxy 
to-day.  Perhaps  one  terrible  sentence  will 
discriminate  historically  between  the  twain. 
Cambridge  produced  the  Reformers  and  Ox- 
ford burned  them. 

Life  at  King's  was  an  inspiring  but  dis- 
arming experience.  As  a  result  of  high  think- 
ing, the  finished  King's  man  acquired  the 


74        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

seeds  of  dilettantism.  He  entered  the  world  a 
little  sceptical,  a  little  doubtful  how  far  the 
battle  of  life  was  worth  fighting.  He  was  un- 
fitted by  the  previous  and  supreme  struggle 
for  knowledge  for  knowledge's  sake.  Never- 
theless, there  were  many  King's  men  who 
tried  to  practise  a  definite  idealism  in  life. 

The  society  at  King's  consisted  of  thirty 
Fellows  or  Dons  and  a  hundred  and  fifty  un- 
dergraduates. The  teaching  staff  was  good 
but  eccentric.  The  best  of  them  taught  by 
inspired  intercourse  rather  than  by  formal  lec- 
tures. For  instance,  Walter  Headlam,  who 
did  more  than  all  Tubingen  and  Gottingen 
to  restore  the  Greek  text  of  ^Eschylus,  could 
only  instruct  select  groups  of  explorers  to  his 
rooms.  On  a  late  afternoon  they  might  dis- 
cover him  dressing,  for  the  day  and  the  night 
were  alike  to  him;  and,  like  Mrs.  Cannam 
in  Dickens,  he  could  not  distinguish  between 
whiter  and  summer.  He  ate  when  he  happened 
to  be  hungry  and  lectured,  like  an  Athenian 
sophist,  when  confronted  by  the  seeking  ig- 
norant. Set  utterances  and  horal  meals  he 
scorned  as  impediments  from  which  his  clear 
spirit  had  been  emancipated.  The  floor  of 
his  room  was  knee-deep  in  books,  folios,  and 
papers.  Unopened  correspondence  lay  strati- 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         75 

fied  between  one  week's  book  reading  and  the 
next.  A  youth  was  once  simple  enough  to 
show  up  a  copy  of  Greek  verses  overnight. 
In  the  morning  Headlam  only  remarked: 
"I  am  afraid  it  is  lost  for  ever !" 

Headlam  used  to  sit  in  the  midst  of  the 
strata  balancing  an  ink-pot  on  one  knee  and 
scribbling  words  into  Greek  texts  missing 
since  the  Renaissance  on  the  other.  His 
famous  emendations  in  exquisite  script  were 
allowed  to  float  about  the  room  until  gathered 
for  the  Classical  Review.  A  year  later  they 
became  the  prey  of  German  editors.  Head- 
lam was  of  those  who  knew  too  much  to  be 
able  to  finish  a  book  conscientiously.  If  a 
commentary  was  pushed  into  his  hand  he 
would  discourse  divinely  on  two  or  three  lines 
of  poetry — but  woe  to  the  commentator!  It 
was  exciting  to  pupils  to  learn  that  text-books 
which  lecturers  were  solemnly  commending 
elsewhere  were  riddled  with  idiotic  pedantry. 
Headlam's  assaults  on  Verrall  were  famous 
in  the  annals  of  literary  duelling.  He  possessed 
that  rare  brilliance  typical  of  English  scholar- 
ship, which  is  content  to  leave  theoretic  spade- 
work  to  the  Germans,  while  mercilessly  crit- 
icising their  practice.  To  him  the  German 
editors  were  only  guessing  what  ^Eschylus 


76        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

ought  to  have  written,  but  did  not.  Head- 
lam's  work  recalled  Cornewall  Lewis's  deft 
attacks  on  Niebuhr's  Roman  History  and  Per- 
son's amused  contempt  of  a  German  rival: 

"The  Germans  in  Greek 
Are  sadly  to  seek, 
Save  only  Hermann 
And  Hermann's  a  German !" 

Even  Liddell  and  Scott's  Lexicon — the  lan- 
tern which  guides  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  in 
its  study  of  Greek — fell  under  Headlam's 
lash.  At  the  time  of  its  revision  he  made  a 
celebrated  offer  to  the  Oxford  Press  to  point 
out  a  distinct  blunder  on  every  page!  He 
gave  his  pupils  that  information  which  is  not 
in  books.  He  could  discuss  the  Eleusinian 
mysteries  with  illustrations  from  the  Bible, 
or  point  out  the  Wagnerian  motifs  underlying 
the  Greek  Choruses — things  hidden  from  gram- 
marians and  the  blind  race  who  set  examina- 
tion papers  for  the  blind.  I  can  hear  him 
explaining  the  witchcraft  in  the  Persce  as 
though  he  believed  in  sorcery,  or  trying  to 
strum  the  lost  music  of  the  Agamemnon  on 
a  hired  piano. 

In  his  fragrant  enthusiasm  and  his  exquisite 
sense  for  the  lost  voices  of  Hellas  he  was  akin 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         77 

to  Shelley — save  that  he  preferred  to  write 
his  poetry  in  Greek,  which  he  considered  an 
easier  language  than  English!  A  real  parallel 
lies  between  Headlam  and  Person — England's 
finest  Grecians.  Each  waged  controversies  of 
scorn,  and,  by  brilliant  emendations,  each  won 
the  clever  perversion  of  "splendid  emendax" 
for  Horace's  splendide  mendax.  Exactly  one 
hundred  years  after  Person,  Headlam  died, 
leaving  the  ^Eschylus  unfinished  which  he  had 
dedicated  to  Swinburne  eight  years  before. 
He  was  very  fond  of  Swinburne's  letter  of 
reply,  that  he  regarded  the  Orestean  Trilogy 
"as  probably  on  the  whole  the  greatest  spir- 
itual work  of  man."  He  used  to  point  out 
to  us  how  Swinburne  was  often  impeded  in 
his  English  verse  by  thinking  in  Greek — a 
trick  he  had  learned  from  Landor.  With  him 
perished  something  very  old,  and  yet  very 
young. 

Another  King's  Don  upon  whose  lips  men 
hung  wonderingly  was  Lowes  Dickinson,  one  of 
Chesterton's  Heretics,  who  was  understood  to 
be  able  to  inculcate  a  prose  style  under  guise 
of  a  teacher  of  history.  He  wrote  the  "Letters 
of  a  Chinese  Official,"  which  drew  a  pompous 
reply  from  Mr.  Bryan,  under  the  impression 
he  was  pulling  some  Mandarin's  pigtail.  The 


78        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

irony  of  time  has  brought  the  comment  that 
Bryan's  policy  is  Chinification !  He  was  a 
good  metaphysician,  but  the  effect  on  his  hear- 
ers was  agnosticism,  and  on  his  imitators  con- 
ceit. He  slowly  drowned  the  Christianity  of 
the  college  in  intellectual  cream.  But  he 
stood  out  for  fair  play.  He  sounded  the  first 
note  in  the  Independent  Review  calling  for  a 
reconsideration  of  the  treatment  meted  to 
Oscar  Wilde.  The  publication  of  De  Profun- 
dis  in  1905  came  to  many  like  the  cry  of  a 
literary  Dreyfus.  The  Wilde  culte  dates  from 
Dickinson's  famous  complaint  that  the  Eng- 
lish could  make  nothing  of  him  or  Blake  or 
Shelley — "but  martyrs."  No  recorder  of  the 
time  can  but  consecrate  or  desecrate  a  page  to 
that  Byron  de  nos  jours,  who  shocked  and  fas- 
cinated the  young  more  after  death  than 
during  life.  His  vogue  represented  less  a 
literary  phase  than  a  kink  in  the  Teutonic 
temperament.  Within  a  few  years  ten  biog- 
raphies of  him  appeared  in  English  while 
German  "sociologists"  reduced  his  sins  to 
scientific  pamphlets.  Perhaps  he  was  more 
guilty  in  word  than  in  deed,  but  the  national 
hypocrisy  which  trampled  upon  him  also 
raised  him  to  the  dignity  of  a  scapegoat.  Be- 
tween the  Diocesan  school  at  Portora  on  the 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         79 

shores  of  Lough  Erne  and  the  cemetery  of 
Pere  Lachaise  lay  the  history  of  the  whole 
aesthetic  movement. 

One  of  his  sons  joined  Cambridge  under  a 
false  name.  Men  used  to  criticise  his  father 
loudly  in  his  presence  to  show  that  they  did 
not  suspect  his  identity.  It  is  memorable  that 
a  son  of  Wilde  has  since  fallen  in  France  under 
another  name  than  that  which  he  redeemed. 

Discussion  at  King's  was  very  catholic. 
Fabianism,  Rowing,  Medievalism,  Darwin, 
Ghostly  Research,  and  our  own  Dons  were 
perennial  topics.  Our  Dons  included  Professor 
Bury  and  Sir  Robert  Ball — who  were  the 
skimmed  cream  of  Dublin  for  English  con- 
sumption. Bury  succeeded  Lord  Acton  in 
the  chair  of  History,  and  was  understood  to 
have  become  a  total  recluse  in  the  attempt  to 
read  Acton's  library.  Sir  Robert  Ball,  known 
as  "Zerubbabel,"  was  chief  jester  in  a  very 
humourless  circle.  His  best  story  pertained 
to  a  popular  lecture  on  "The  Mountains  of 
the  Moon,"  which  he  once  expected  to  deliver 
in  a  provincial  town.  As  he  was  driven  to 
the  town  hall  he  was  faced  by  placards  ad- 
vertising him  on  the  subject  of  "Earthquakes." 
How  he  gratified  an  English  mob  desirous  of 
knowledge  of  the  earth's  crust  by  deft  manip- 


80        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

ulation  of  photographic  slides  of  the  moon 
is  a  tale  still  told  in  colleges. 

One  charming  old  man  of  antediluvian 
standing  dwelt  among  us,  whom  only  Lamb  or 
Dickens  could  have  described.  He  was  the 
subject  of  as  many  legends  as  Jowett  at  Ox- 
ford. Outside  Latin  Poesy,  Madrigals,  and 
Whist  he  was  a  child.  He  had  made  a  railway 
map  of  excursion  and  cheap  trains  all  over 
England  in  the  hope  of  visiting  his  scattered 
friends  at  one  swoop,  but  one  link  was  always 
missing !  It  was  said  that  when  intrusted  with 
the  College  Chapel  he  filled  his  pockets  with 
nuts  and  pennies  to  facilitate  counting  the 
men.  The  confusion  which  ensued  in  the 
Porch  of  men  groping  for  dropped  pennies  and 
nuts  was  so  great  that,  mistaking  it  for  a  riot, 
he  hastily  announced:  "No  chapel  for  the  day." 

The  only  Don  outside  English  traditions  was 
Sir  Charles  Waldstein.  As  Lowes  Dickinson 
was  a  Cambridge  version  of  Pater,  so  Wald- 
stein was  an  Americanised  Ruskin.  It  was  a 
bold  step  to  bring  a  professor  from  the  States 
to  teach  fine  art  to  Cambridge,  but  he  made 
a  most  suggestive  teacher.  He  used  to  ask 
audiences  of  brute-male  Britons  how  many  had 
ever  noticed  the  colour  of  their  mothers*  eyes. 

In   my  time  he   was    planning    a    cosmo- 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         81 

poll  tan  dream  for  excavating  Herculaneum. 
His  lectures  were  frequently  broken  by  ap- 
plause as  he  read  telegrams  from  the  last 
sovereign  to  approve  the  scheme.  The  only 
other  Don  of  American  training  in  Cambridge 
was  Mr.  Lapsley  from  Harvard,  who  put  on 
the  mantle  of  an  English  Don  with  the  au- 
tochthonous grace  and  ability  of  Americans 
placed  in  old  English  institutions.  He  was  a 
fair  return  from  America  for  the  original  gift 
of  John  Harvard,  who  was  bred  at  Emmanuel, 
Cambridge.  I  do  not  think  I  have  met  a  sin- 
cerer  Englishman  except  Henry  James.  I 
sometimes  suspect  that  New  England  is  the 
only  bit  of  "Old  England"  left. 

The  two  great  and  venerable  figures  at 
King's  were  the  Provost,  "Monty"  James, 
and  Oscar  Browning,  "The  O.  B."  Dr.  James 
was  at  the  head  of  all  mediaeval  palaeography, 
and  used  to  distract  our  evenings  by  his  ghastly 
"Ghost-Stories  of  an  Antiquary,"  which  since 
gathered  in  book  form  have  thrilled  Mr. 
Roosevelt. 

Oscar  Browning  had  known  everybody  and 
done  everything  for  a  generation.  In  his 
History  lectures  he  could  refer  familiarly  to 
viceroys  and  statesmen  by  their  Christian 
names.  The  legends  told  of  him  would  fill 


82        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

a  volume.  One  day  as  Tennyson  entered  the 
great  court  of  King's  a  bulky  professor  is 
said  to  have  run  to  him,  explaining:  "I  am 
Browning!" 

"No,  you  are  not,"  replied  Tennyson,  and 
walked  away. 

Another  legend  recounted  that  0.  B.  had 
assisted,  owing  to  his  learning  and  in  spite  of 
his  heresy,  at  the  Vatican  Council.  He  stood 
for  Parliament  and  was  defeated  by  his  own 
pupil  Austen  Chamberlain,  whose  supporters 
followed  the  sage  with  derisive  cries  of  "poet !" 

O.  B.  was  the  perennial  butt  for  University 
jokes.  In  my  time  he  retired,  having  out- 
lived his  glory.  On  Sunday  evenings  a  rabble 
of  the  curious  gathered  in  the  rooms  through 
which  the  best  of  the  Cambridge  world  had 
passed,  and  listened  to  O.  B.'s  swan-song, 
which  was  a  gabble  of  royal  anecdotes  accom- 
panied on  an  instrument  irreverently  called 
the  O.  B.-ophone !  Nevertheless,  Quixote  was 
not  a  greater  Don  in  his  time.  Both  at  Eton 
and  Cambridge  he  had  fought  for  reform  and 
met  a  reformer's  fate.  Of  his  courage  I  only 
remember  that  in  old  age  he  acted  Pickwick 
in  Esperanto. 

It  was  curious  how  Cambridge  lived  on  the 
myths  of  her  own  men.  There  was  the  great 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         83 

Dr.  Munro,  professor  of  Latin,  who  was  pas- 
sionately fond  of  figs.  One  year  the  Trinity 
fig-tree  produced  amid  much  leafen  travail, 
but  one  enormous  fruit,  which  Munro  tended 
until  the  eve  before  eating,  when  he  affixed  his 
card  with  "Dr.  Munro's  fig"  written  upon  it. 
The  next  morning  the  fig  was  gone,  but  on 
the  card  was  added:  "A  fig  for  Dr.  Munro !" 
Who,  too,  can  forget  the  memory  of  J.  K. 
Stephen,  the  flower  of  King's,  who  once  read 
a  learned  paper  to  a  learned  society  from  a 
few  blank  sheets  of  paper!  He  died  young 
and  mad,  leaving  behind  him  two  memorable 
lines  desirous  of  a  better  country: 

"When  the  Rudyards  cease  from  Kipling 
And  the  Haggards  ride  no  more !" 

which  reminds  me  that  the  lyrics  of  "The 
Merry  Widow"  and  "The  Quaker  Girl"  were 
written  by  a  King's  Don  (Mr.  Roper). 

Among  the  younger  men  was  a  brilliant  in- 
consequential being,  Wingfield  Stratford,  who 
wrote  a  remarkable  History  of  English  Patriot- 
ism. It  amounted  to  a  Rise  and  Decline  of  the 
British  Empire  (haunted  by  fear  of  the  de- 
cline), and  written  in  the  torrential  and  per- 
sonal style  of  late  Victorian. 

King's    perhaps    attained    a    zenith    when 


84        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Wingfield  Stratford  was  correcting  his  last 
pages  in  the  same  building  in  which  Rupert 
Brooke  was  touching  his  early  sonnets.  Neither 
was  then  known  outside  the  college  gates. 
Brooke  has  since  been  saluted  as  a  poet  in  two 
hemispheres.  Yet  it  will  be  rather  as  a  dawn 
star  than  as  a  harvest-moon  that  his  light  will 
shine.  He  was  cut  down  on  life's  threshold, 
like  a  knight  errant  beating  on  the  door  that 
others  will  open.  To  King's  men  his  death  came 
with  the  pathos  of  the  death  of  a  relative  or 
a  child.  We  felt  the  same  sickness  at  heart 
on  reading  Brooke's  name  in  a  casualty  list 
that  we  would  feel  on  seeing  a  lark  shot  to 
earth  as  it  rose  in  song.  We  could  have  spared 
half  our  "distinguished  men  of  letters"  for 
him. 

Well  I  remember  the  first  day  I  saw  him  at 
King's — on  the  football  field.  Suddenly  a 
freshman  with  long  and  not  unhyacinthine 
locks  was  seen  to  tear  through  the  muddy 
scrum.  It  was  Rupert  Brooke,  and  we  paused 
in  our  game  to  observe  this  semblance  of  a 
Greek  god  in  a  football  shirt.  "And  did  you 
once  see  Shelley  plain?"  another  age  will  ask. 

Brooke's  first  public  appearance  was  as  the 
messenger  in  the  Eumenides,  which  was  played 
in  the  original  Greek  in  the  Michaelmas  term 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         85 

of  1906.  With  his  clarion,  buskins,  and  classical 
dress  he  looked  like  a  youthful  Gabriel  "wind- 
ing God's  lonely  horn."  He  was  one  of  those 
people  who  could  not  help  looking  picturesque. 

It  was  a  glory  for  King's  that  Rupert  Brooke 
and  Edward  Busk  should  have  been  contem- 
poraries in  her  gates.  When  Brooke  was  send- 
ing his  first  sonnets  to  the  Westminster  Gazette, 
Busk  was  amusing  us  with  "the  new  sport  of 
motor-bicycle  making,"  as  we  called  it.  He 
was  the  most  promising  engineer  of  his  year, 
and  solved  the  problem  of  aeroplane  stability 
under  a  high  wind  in  a  manner  that  gave  the 
English  command  of  the  air.  Both  met  early 
and  tragic  ends.  Brooke  was  buried  in  an 
olive  grove  in  the  Greek  seas.  Busk  was  in- 
cinerated in  his  blazing  car  hundreds  of  feet 
above  the  ground.  Busk  was  perhaps  the 
greatest  individual  loss  during  the  war.  It 
was  only  fitting  for  the  King  to  write  a  letter 
to  mark  his  worth.  He  had  applied  genius  to 
mechanics.  I  remember  him  as  a  boy  of  in- 
domitable energy  and  resource.  The  only 
meal  to  which  he  ever  asked  me  took  place  at 
midnight  down  the  river,  in  a  distant  garden 
to  which  the  guests  swam,  propelling  the  means 
of  entertainment  in  a  bathtub. 

Besides  real  genius,  which  necessarily  attains 


86        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

fame,  there  was  a  band  of  enthusiasts  with 
us,  who  won  such  honour  as  comes  from  the 
breach  of  conventional  methods — men  who 
were  revolted  by  the  sterile  agnosticism  or 
careless  national  sense  in  our  midst.  Youthful 
charlatanism  took  curious  forms.  In  my  time 
two  champions  of  Christendom  flung  them- 
selves at  the  prevailing  infidelity,  and  after- 
ward became  insane.  One  sacrificed  his 
career  to  found  a  sect,  and  another  attempted 
to  disprove  materialism  by  rather  gruesome 
experiments  in  psychical  research.  In  the 
name  and  cause  of  the  disparaged  Deity  he 
ventured  to  raise  the  most  famous  of  college 
ghosts,  which  had  long  and  quietly  inhabited 
rooms  at  Corpus. 

Religion  we  used  to  debate  furiously.  The 
strangest  wager  I  ever  heard  of  arose  from  such 
a  debate.  An  agnostic  and  a  Christian,  after 
an  evening  of  vain  controversy,  dared  each 
other  to  persuade  a  woman  to  leave  the  streets 
on  the  ethical  or  the  Christian  plea.  It  was 
the  agnostic  who  won. 

The  undergraduate  tendency  led  men  to 
extremes  before  they  subsided  into  ordinary 
life.  Enthusiasts  who  persisted  in  their  en- 
thusiasms were  liable  to  be  discarded.  If 
they  were  prepared  to  go  into  the  wilderness 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         87 

they  might  go  alone.  Men  like  Father  Hugh 
Benson,  Leo  Maxse,  Eustace  Miles,  and  Er- 
nest Edghill  had  recently  gone  from  Cambridge 
against  a  mocking  world.  All  except  Benson 
were  King's  men.  Miles  gave  London  a  Pro- 
teid  Restaurant.  Benson  threw  his  vivid  per- 
sonality into  the  Catholic  cause.  Edghill,  the 
finest  theologian  of  his  day,  who  was  said  to 
have  composed  his  Hulsean  lectures  in  the 
train  overnight,  wore  away  his  short  days 
wrestling  with  the  social  danger  in  the  slums. 
Leo  Maxse  scented  and  denounced  the  Ger- 
man peril  for  ten  years  before  the  war.  As 
editor  of  the  National  Review  he  endured  all 
the  pangs  and  triumphs  of  Cassandra.  The 
more  hysterically  he  told  sooth  the  more  bit- 
terly he  was  repelled  by  those  who  preferred 
smooth-lipped  prophets.  The  National  Re- 
view played  a  historic  part  in  those  days,  not 
unlike  that  of  the  Anti- Jacobin,  under  Can- 
ning's editorship,  in  stimulating  feeling  against 
Napoleon  and  the  French.  Maxse  lived  to  be 
justified,  but  Benson  and  Edghill  died  like 
candles  in  a  high  wind  by  the  wayside. 
Edghill  was  the  protagonist  in  a  fierce  fight 
whether  the  King's  College  Mission  should 
be  Christian  or  ethical  in  character.  As  the 
Christians  drew  into  rival  sects,  the  agnostic 


88        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

element  triumphed.  Rome  naturally  offered 
a  Gordian  solution  to  many,  of  whom  Benson 
certainly  proved  a  flower  among  controversial 
thorns. 

It  seemed  strange  for  the  son  of  an  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  to  become  a  Catholic 
priest.  Yet  never  was  chrysalis  hatched  with 
such  jubilant  celerity  as  when  the  Benjamin 
of  Lambeth  Palace  became  a  free-lance  in  the 
service  of  the  Vatican.  As  a  curate  in  Cam- 
bridge he  uttered  an  ascetic  note  in  the  home 
of  "muscular  Christianity."  Charles  Kingsley 
was  responsible  for  muscular  Christianity.  As 
a  typical  Cambridge  man  he  provoked  the  Ox- 
ford Cardinal's  Apologia.  The  Cambridge  ideal 
associated  Health  and  Holiness.  The  extreme 
opposite  was  St.  Hildegarde's  saying  that  God 
cannot  dwell  in  a  healthy  body.  The  old 
Puritans  would  have  said  the  same  of  a  happy 
body.  But  all  happiness  is  haunted,  and  Ben- 
son exactly  appreciated  the  mixture  of  fear 
and  fun  which  goes  to  the  making  of  true  re- 
ligion. With  fecundive  fervour  he  poured 
forth  a  series  of  novels,  which  may  be  described 
as  the  Epistles  of  Hugh  the  Preacher  to  the 
Anglicans — to  the  Conventionalists — to  the 
Sensualists,  etc. 

I  can  see  him  sitting  in  the  firelight  of  my 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         89 

room  at  King's,  unravelling  a  weird  story 
about  demoniacal  substitution,  his  eyeballs 
staring  into  the  flame,  and  his  nervous  fingers 
twitching  to  baptise  the  next  undergraduate 
he  could  thrill  or  mystify  into  the  fold  of 
Rome. 

His  career  was  that  of  an  ecclesiastical 
Winston  Churchill,  with  whom  he  offered  a 
parallel  even  to  the  stutter  in  his  speech. 
Yet  both  could  command  the  irritated  at- 
tention of  the  elder  men  they  addressed.  In 
each  case  a  father's  son  made  a  famous  father 
memorable  for  his  son.  It  was  Archbishop 
Benson  who  gave  Anglicans  their  watchword 
in  resisting  "The  Italian  Mission,"  and  Ran- 
dolph Churchill  who  taught  the  Tories  to 
chime:  "Ulster  will  fight  and  Ulster  will  be 
right."  It  was  a  curious  denouement  to  hear 
the  sons  of  both  reversing  the  wisdom  of  their 
fathers.  Winston  preached  Home  Rule  in  Bel- 
fast, and  Hugh  Benson  upheld  the  Pope  in 
Cambridge — instances  both  of  the  old  Greek 
word  peripateia,  which  may  be  translated, 
"the  somersault  divine" ! 

The  King's  man  was  perhaps  a  type,  but  the 
Cambridge  man  ran  out  of  a  more  general 
mould.  It  may  be  queried  what  he  had  to 
show  at  the  end  and  how  he  has  proved  in 


90        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

the  day  of  national  trial.  The  ordinary  de- 
gree man  leaves  Cambridge  with  a  certificate 
enabling  him  to  step  into  the  clerical,  legal,  or 
teaching  professions,  but  each  individual  must 
find  himself  out  as  well  as  his  profession,  and 
then  how  to  profess  it.  He  is  better  equipped 
physically  than  scientifically.  Sixty  per  cent 
have  passed  through  the  training  necessary  to 
athletics.  Athletics  do  count  first  in  University 
life  and  the  authorities  submit.  Perhaps,  they 
prefer  to  turn  out  normal,  clean-limbed  men  to 
a  horde  of  pedants  and  professors.  To  win  a 
dark  or  light  Blue  at  athletics  gives  men  an 
unassailable  distinction  through  life.  The 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  McKenna  learned 
to  count  as  bow  of  the  Cambridge  boat.  Picked 
parishes  and  legal  partnerships  drop  into  the 
lap  of  athletic  heroes,  which  is  logical  in  a  land 
where  Boat-race  day  is  a  national  event,  and 
Empire  day  a  recent  creation  of  faddists.  The 
Oxford  or  Cambridge  rowing  Blue  touched  the 
high-water  mark  of  the  system.  The  row- 
ing coaches  were  subsidiary  gods.  The  whole 
University  could  be  divided  on  a  matter  of 
oarsmanship.  To  the  nation  it  was  more  im- 
portant that  Cambridge  should  defeat  the 
Harvard  eight  which  appeared  on  the  Thames 
in  1906  than  that  the  House  of  Lords  on  its 


CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY         91 

banks  should  be  saved.  And  there  is  sanity 
in  the  choice.  A  seat  may  be  purchased  in 
the  Lords  but  not  in  the  Varsity  Crew. 

Ideals  hold  sway  at  Cambridge,  but  the 
strenuous  life  is  not  abhorred.  In  my  tune 
the  most  famous  exponent  of  Rooseveltism 
offered  two  wagers  to  the  effeminate.  To 
row  against  anybody  the  seventeen  miles  to 
Ely,  and  then  run  the  full  distance  back,  or 
to  walk  a  greater  number  of  miles  in  the  day 
than  any  one  could  eat  eggs! 

The  Great  War  has  not  found  University 
men  lacking.  No  genius  or  strategist  has 
arisen  from  the  academic  ranks,  but  by  scores 
and  hundreds  Varsity  men  have  left  their 
office  stools  and  taken  command  of  companies 
in  the  field  as  readily  as  though  they  were 
football-teams.  They  have  shown  themselves 
efficient,  chivalrous,  and  fearless.  The  losses 
which  have  befallen  them  are  greater  propor- 
tionately than  in  any  other  class.  University 
traditions  may  perish,  as  they  perished  in 
America  during  her  Civil  War;  the  old-fash- 
ioned culture  and  the  time-honoured  jokes 
may  become  extinct — the  science  of  English 
rowing  even  may  be  lost  in  foreign  graves 
— but  the  great  Universities  will  not  have 
worked  or  played  in  vain ! 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ENGLAND 

"CHRISTIAN  England"  is  a  cant  term  much 
employed  by  the  critics  and  the  upholders  of 
orthodoxy  alike.  What  it  means  is  a  dis- 
puted proposition.  As  a  Catholic  nation  Eng- 
land partook  nobly  of  the  Crusades,  and 
built  the  finest  set  of  national  cathedrals  ex- 
tant in  Europe — thanks,  indeed,  to  loans  from 
the  Jews,  whom  she  treated  with  intermittent 
tolerance.  The  Crusaders,  the  Lollards,  the 
Elizabethan  High-Churchmen,  the  Caroline 
divines,  the  Puritans,  and  eighteenth-century 
bishops,  who  signed  the  articles  of  faith  "with 
a  smile  or  a  sigh,"  have  all  left  their  mark  on 
the  national  religion.  A  general  result  makes 
English  Christianity  sentimental  rather  than 
theological.  It  tends  to  save  appearances 
rather  than  souls. 

In  public  life  religion  makes  little  difference. 
The  devotee  and  the  anticlerical  is  equally 
rare.  The  state  bishops  are  objects  of  envy 
rather  than  of  reverence.  The  depths  of 
religious  awe  between  a  foreign  Catholic  and 
an  Anglican  appear  in  the  story  of  the  honest 

92 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ENGLAND     93 

Briton  arguing  with  a  Frenchman  and  end- 
ing: "To  H— 11  with  the  Pope !"  With  a  pal- 
lor befitting  the  terrible  words  of  his  reply,  the 
Frenchman  drew  himself  up  and  uttered:  "To 
H — 11  with  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury!'* 
Whereat  the  Briton  dissolved  in  laughter. 
"To  H— 11  with  the  gold  stick  in  waiting" 
would  have  sounded  as  comical.  The  English 
Primate  is  a  court  official,  and  it  is  the  Chan- 
cellor who  keeps  the  King's  conscience.  Arch- 
bishop Laud  was  the  only  occupant  of  the 
see  since  the  Reformation  to  press  divine 
rather  than  official  honours  on  himself,  and 
the  only  one  to  suffer  execution  on  the  scaf- 
fold in  consequence. 

Reverence  and  common  sense  go  to  the 
making  of  English  religion.  "Preach  the 
Gospel  and  put  down  enthusiasm,"  was  a 
Victorian  Bishop's  watchword.  The  religion 
taught  at  the  great  schools  amounts  prac- 
tically to  a  light  coat  of  moral  disinfectant 
with  a  sentimental  affection  for  the  school 
chapel  thrown  in.  A  sixth-form  boy  can  bet- 
ter criticise  New  Testament  Greek,  compared, 
say,  with  Thucydides,  than  expound  its  doc- 
trines. 

It  is  only  at  the  University  that  such  as 
are  religious  tend  to  shuffle  into  shades  and 


94        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

sects.  Organised  efforts  to  draw  men  Into 
different  doxies  fail.  The  ordinary  English- 
man has  not  been  troubled  by  religion  for  two 
hundred  years.  At  Cambridge  missioners  from 
America  were  received  with  polite  amuse- 
ment. Everything  American — Mrs.  Eddy's 
Theology,  Mr.  Bryan's  Bimetallism,  Mr.  Car- 
negie's Libraries,  or  even  Gildersleeve's  Pindar 
were  regarded  as  nostrums.  The  University 
training  secures  a  constant  stream  of  recruits 
for  the  Church,  for  it  often  unfits  them  for 
any  other  profession.  To  the  gentleman  of 
culture  or  country  pursuits,  the  Church  of 
England  rectory  affords  a  temptation  that 
the  vulgar  Dissenting  manse  or  the  disciplined 
Catholic  presbytery  cannot  offer.  The  ideal 
of  the  English  Church  has  been  to  provide 
a  resident  gentleman  for  every  parish  in  the 
kingdom,  and  there  have  been  worse  ideals. 
In  the  good  old  days  the  parson  read  Horace 
and  rode  to  hounds.  Since  agricultural  de- 
pression has  set  in,  the  curate  reads  Kipling 
and  plays  football.  The  old-fashioned  Angli- 
canism and  Dissent  of  England  are  practically 
dead,  and  parasites  devour  then-  remains.  Rit- 
ualism has  eaten  into  the  core  of  the  Estab- 
lishment, while  sects  and  political  societies 
have  dismembered  Puritanism.  The  Catholic 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ENGLAND     95 

Church  has  made  conquests  in  the  upper 
classes,  but  she  has  leaked  from  the  lower 
story. 

Anglicanism  is  less  a  creed  than  a  condi- 
tion of  mind  peculiar  to  the  English.  An- 
glicanism spells  an  ideal  of  temporal  followed 
by  eternal  comfort.  It  is  the  historical  at- 
tempt to  combine  the  advantages  of  the  Catho- 
lic and  the  Reformed  faith.  It  implies  tradition 
without  mystery,  bishops  without  authority,  an 
open  Bible  and  a  closed  Hell.  The  Articles  of 
the  English  Church  were  originally  articles  of 
peace  devised  to  enable  the  rival  supporters 
of  church  and  sovereign  to  live  under  one 
roof.  Real  Protestantism  came  with  the  Pu- 
ritans, and  Cromwell  was  the  first  Noncon- 
formist. Anglican  doctrine  changes  with  dynas- 
ties and  fashions  of  thought.  The  ritual  varies 
with  each  parish.  But  the  Church  has  its 
place  as  an  old-established  institution  dis- 
seminating traditions  of  decency  and  honour. 
Even  Catholics  would  deprecate  its  disestab- 
lishment as  a  social  disaster  second  only  to 
the  overthrow  of  the  House  of  Lords. 

The  two  religious  movements  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  the  Evangelical  and  the  Cath- 
olic revivals,  loosened  the  stakes  of  Angli- 
canism as  a  mere  church-and-state  preserve. 


96        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

The  medievalist  with  a  taste  for  liturgy,  the 
Hot  Gospeller,  and  the  critic  of  the  Pentateuch 
all  entered  within  its  portals.  The  virtue  of 
toleration  even  for  opposing  beliefs  has  been 
deduced  by  apologists  from  necessity.  There 
is  a  delightful  tale  of  a  Bishop  of  Gloucester 
who  ruled  over  High  and  Low  Church  with 
an  equal  mind  until  the  former  presented  him 
with  a  popish  mitre,  which  he  promised  to 
wear.  On  the  expected  day  the  Low  Church 
gathered  to  protest  against  a  Bishop  wearing 
a  hat  in  church,  but  the  wise  Bishop  satisfied 
both  by  carrying  the  dangerous  emblem  under 
his  arm ! 

There  is  a  wonderful  comprehensiveness  in 
the  Church  of  England.  At  Gibraltar  or  in 
Ulster  Anglicanism  may  be  a  different  church. 
The  Bishop  of  Gibraltar  used  to  dress  as  a 
Catholic  prelate,  whose  see  was  Southern  Eu- 
rope. "I  believe  I  am  in  your  Lordship's 
diocese,"  was  the  Pope's  humorous  comment 
to  him.  It  was  the  same  pontiff  who  answered 
an  Anglican  Bishop's  request  by  giving  him 
the  formal  blessing  reserved  to  incense  before 
burning.  The  contretemps  caused  by  High 
Church  bishops  travelling  abroad  are  beyond 
count.  The  greatest  sensation  was  caused  by 
a  Scottish  prelate  who  went  to  France  in  the 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ENGLAND     97 

purple  cassock  of  a  continental  bishop.  As 
he  brought  his  wife  with  him,  the  pious  inn- 
keeper refused  to  allow  her  in. 

"Mais  je  suis  en  vacances"  explained  the 
paragon  of  diocesan  respectability. 

"II  ny  a  pas  de  doute  que  monseigneur  est 
en  vacances"  replied  the  poor  innkeeper  to 
whom  the  situation  was  with  difficulty  ex- 
plained by  the  chaplain. 

The  most  curious  compromise  in  England 
is  that  the  wives  of  spiritual  peers  have  no 
official  position.  This  dates  from  Queen  Eliza- 
beth's cheery  remark  when  the  first  married 
Archbishop  brought  his  lady  to  court:  "Mis- 
tress I  would  not,  wife  I  cannot  call  you." 

In  Ireland  the  Anglican  bishops  amounted 
to  Cromwellians  in  lawn  sleeves.  To-day  they 
are  the  leaders  of  a  stranded  crusade  and  the 
trustees  of  a  disestablished  church.  For  three 
hundred  years  they  preached  that  St.  Patrick 
was  an  Anglican,  until  Gladstone  bade  them 
throw  up  the  missionary  sponge.  Though  the 
native  cathedrals  and  old  revenues  had  been 
made  theirs,  the  duel  had  proven  unequal. 
The  Catholic  Church  thrived  on  poverty  and 
persecution,  and  became  more  than  ever  the 
church  of  the  people.  In  contrast  to  elsewhere, 
the  Catholic  Church  in  Ireland  became  so 


98        THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

identified  with  popular  rights  and  opposed  to 
feudalism  that  I  remember  an  old  Catholic 
peer  exclaiming:  "We  have  held  the  faith  in 
spite  of  the  priests! " 

Anglicanism  failed  in  Ireland  because  of  the 
poor  quality  of  bishops.  Swift  said  they  were 
highwaymen  who  stole  the  papers  of  the  true 
bishops  on  their  way  over.  At  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century  Primate  Stuart  wrote  to 
Lord  Hardwicke: 

Fix  Mr.  Beresford  at  Kilmore,  and  we  shall  then  have 
three  very  inactive  bishops,  and,  what  I  trust  the  world  has 
not  yet  seen,  three  bishops  in  one  district  reported  to  be  the 
most  profligate  men  in  Europe. 

As  late  as  1822,  Bishop  Jocelyn  of  Clogher 
was  removed » from  his  see  for  scandalous 
crime.  There  were  always  exceptions.  There 
was  a  Berkeley  at  Cloyne  and  an  Alexander 
at  Armagh,  the  latter  of  whom  survived  into 
the  twentieth  century  as  the  last  of  the  state- 
appointed  bishops  in  Ireland.  When  a  child 
I  recited  "There  is  a  green  hill  far  away" 
to  his  wife,  the  authoress.  I  was  asked  at  the 
close  which  verse  I  liked  best.  I  answered: 
"The  last."  "And  why  ?"  "Because  it  is  the 
last,"  I  replied  frankly. 

When  Archbishop  Alexander  was  old    and 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ENGLAND     99 

I  was  young  we  became  close  friends.  I  was 
sometimes  left  in  charge  of  him  at  his  palace, 
for  he  grew  very  feeble.  We  used  to  drive 
together  round  the  patrimony  of  Patrick  (the 
demesne  that  disestablishment  had  left  him) 
and  over  the  crest  of  Armagh,  where  Brian 
Boru  lies  buried  and  the  flags  taken  from  the 
French  at  Ballinamuck  hang  in  the  old  cathe- 
dral. After  a  peep  to  see  how  his  rival,  Car- 
dinal Logue,  was  progressing  with  his  brand- 
new  structure,  we  used  to  return  to  discuss 
Greek  plays  and  Latin  Fathers  under  the  pic- 
tures of  all  the  courtiers,  scoundrels,  and  good 
men  who  had  ever  ruled  Armagh  for  England. 
The  greatest  in  the  miscellany  was  Usher, 
that  truly  Irish  divine,  who  first  proved  that 
Christ  was  born  in  the  year  4  B.  C. 

Archbishop  Alexander  could  recall  New- 
man's preaching  at  Oxford.  "He  was  an 
apostle!"  he  used  to  say,  and  to  hear  him 
preach  in  St.  Mary's  he  often  went  without 
the  supper  which  his  college  had  made  a 
movable  feast  to  coincide  with  the  hour  of 
Newman's  preaching.  Dr.  Alexander  was  a 
High-Churchman,  and  when  he  maintained  the 
symbolism  of  the  Cross  an  Orange  mob  stoned 
his  carriage  in  Dublin !  Plunged  all  his  life 
in  the  Irish  maelstrom,  he  always  held  out  for 


100      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

peace  with  principle.  Old  age  found  him  un- 
daunted and  unsoured,  nor  had  humour  de- 
parted from  him  or  his  neighbour,  Cardinal 
Logue.  I  wish  I  could  sketch  that  quaint  and 
venerable  pair  as  I  remember  them. 

Archbishop  Alexander,  with  his  round,  be- 
nignant face  and  bulky  frame,  needed  only  a 
peruke  to  resemble  an  angelified  Dr.  Johnson, 
as  he  laid  down  the  laws  of  poetry  and  the 
Church  to  us  over  his  teacups.  Here  is  a 
page  I  once  scribbled  like  a  third-rate  Boswell: 

"  Pope  Leo  XIII  has  written  some  Latin 
verses,  my  Lord." 

"Yes,  but  he  is  not  infallible  in  metre.  I 
have  found  one  false  quantity.  Dr.  Butler,  of 
Trinity,  is  the  greatest  wielder  of  classic  verse 
in  the  world.  He  threw  Tennyson's  '  Crossing 
the  Bar'  into  six  different  Greek  and  Latin 
measures." 

'"  Who  is  your  favourite  playwright?  " 

"  JSschylus.  He  wrote  the  finest  line  in  poe- 
try, when  he  played  on  Helen's  name,  call- 
ing her  Helenas,  helandros,  heleptolis — bane  of 
ship,  bane  of  man,  and  bane  of  city! " 

"  Is  there  any  Greek  irony  in  the  Gospel?  " 

"  Yes,  the  verse  '  And  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up, 
will  draw  all  men  unto  me '  is  irony,  dramatic 
and  divine." 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ENGLAND     101 

Cardinal  Logue  looked  and  thought  the  very 
opposite.  Like  the  Apostles,  he  came  of  fisher- 
folk,  and  his  gaunt,  bony  face  with  bushy 
brows  planted  over  his  sad  yet  shrewd  Celtic 
eyes  made  him  like  Granuaile  or  some .  such 
weather-battered  personification  of  Ireland  in 
a  cassock.  He  too  had  passed  outside  politics 
and  beyond  controversy.  He  was  a  link  with 
Ireland's  penal  past.  He  had  outlived  his 
generation  and  filled  the  sees  of  Ireland  twice 
and  three  times  over  with  his  own  hands.  He 
told  me  he  had  sat  on  the  bishops'  bench 
with  John  MacHale  of  Tuam,  who  had  been 
a  Bishop  before  Catholic  emancipation  (1829). 
MacHale  died  in  1881  and  Logue  was  conse- 
crated in  the  seventies. 

The  interchange  of  humour  and  respect 
kept  Logue  and  Alexander  friends.  When 
Cardinal  Vannutelli  came  to  consecrate  the 
new  cathedral  at  Armagh,  Alexander  left  a 
card  with  the  Pope's  legate.  The  two  cardinals 
paid  the  Protestant  primate  a  visit.  As  the 
three  old  men  were  gossiping  in  Latin  under 
the  roof  most  sacred  to  Protestant  ascendancy, 
a  tumult  was  heard  in  the  streets,  and  great 
was  their  amusement  on  learning  afterward 
that  rival  religious  mobs  had  begun  to  break 
windows  in  their  honour. 


102      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Cardinal  Logue  used  to  describe  the  con- 
clave which  elected  Pius  X  with  some  humour 
(now  cardinals  are  forbidden  to  mention  de- 
tails); how  he  and  two  others  came  together 
socially  and  were  mistaken  for  plotters,  which 
they  were  not  at  all,  at  all!  And  how,  had  he 
been  made  Pope,  he  would  have  certainly 
jumped  out  of  the  window! 

Alexander  was  the  high-water  mark  of  all 
that  was  best  in  Anglicanism.  He  was  tolerant 
without  being  unorthodox.  I  remember  the 
wrath  which  mantled  upon  his  gentle  old  face 
after  reading  a  sermon  by  Dean  Hensley  Hen- 
son.  "He  has  blasphemed  the  Mother  of 
God!"  They  were  brave  words  for  an  Irish 
Primate  to  utter. 

Alexander  was  the  last  of  the  great  pulpit 
orators,  comprising  the  Liddons  and  the  Ma- 
gees,  in  whose  wake  came  only  the  sky-squib- 
bers  and  slang  preachers.  The  slump  which 
has  been  visible  in  the  state  has  visited  the 
Church.  The  Great  War  found  no  single  great 
man  on  the  bishops'  bench  except  Gore,  of 
Oxford,  who,  owing  to  his  liberal  views,  was 
barely  on  speaking  terms  with  his  diocese. 
The  archbishoprics  were  filled  by  courtiers, 
fashionable  in  doctrine  as  in  politics. 

When    I    became    a    Catholic,    Archbishop 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ENGLAND     103 

Alexander  sent  for  me  and,  after  a  good-hu- 
moured scolding,  added:  "I  nearly  did  it  myself 
when  I  was  your  age!"  He  told  me  that  al- 
most all  his  Oxford  friends  had  become  Catholic 
priests,  but  what  he  mourned  was  that  they 
disappeared.  He  seemed  to  think  they  drifted 
away  like  wrecks.  It  is  certainly  true  that 
the  Catholic  Church  made  wonderful  converts 
in  those  days.  The  pick  of  Oxford  followed 
Newman,  and  what,  indeed,  happened  to  them 
all?  Save  for  a  Manning  or  a  Ward,  they 
were  not  much  heard  of  again. 

The  leading  Anglicans  are  generally  laymen. 
Gladstone  was  a  church  reader,  and  tried  to 
use  his  position  of  premier  to  make  theological 
interruptions  during  the  Vatican  council.  Only 
the  adroitness  of  his  diplomats  saved  him  from 
a  foolish  position.  Lord  Amp  thill,  who  pre- 
vented Disraeli  from  making  a  speech  in  bad 
French  at  the  Berlin  Congress,  saved  Glad- 
stone from  worse  theology  in  1870.  However, 
Gladstone  apologetically  sent  a  British  ship- 
of-war  to  secure  the  safety  of  the  Pope  during 
the  fall  of  the  Temporal  Power.  Lord  Hali- 
fax has  been  described  as  the  lay  pope  of  the 
Church  of  England.  He  sacrificed  a  great 
career  to  lead  the  High  Church  and  further 
reunion  with  the  Mother  Church  of  Rome, 


104      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

whom  the  High  Church  nicknamed  "Aunty," 
and  the  Low  Church  "The  Scarlet  Woman." 
I  once  heard  the  present  Archbishop  of  York 
humorously  describe  her  in  conversation  as 
his  Pink  Aunt! 

If  Lord  Halifax  had  been  in  holy  orders 
he  would  have  been  put  into  prison  or  tried 
like  the  saintly  Bishop  King  for  ritualism. 
He  has  described  to  me  the  most  thrilling  mo- 
ment of  his  life  when  he  almost  induced  Leo 
XIII  to  recognize  Anglican  Orders.  Far  more 
ascetic  and  theological  than  the  bishops  he 
vainly  endeavours  to  persuade  to  live  up  to 
their  Catholic  title,  he  hovers  like  an  ignis 
fatuus  between  two  Churches.  He  was  the 
good  influence  among  Edward  VII's  fast 
friends  in  youth.  It  was  Halifax  who  procured 
the  prayers  and  telegram  of  Pius  IX  when  the 
prince's  life  was  despaired  of. 

At  the  other  pole  to  Lord  Halifax  was  Lord 
Radstock,  who,  like  the  famous  Lord  Dart- 
mouth, "wears  a  coronet  and  prays"!  Rad- 
stock was  a  drawing-room  preacher,  who 
claimed  to  have  converted  the  old  Emperor 
William.  He  once  went  to  preach  to  the  god- 
less French,  and  was  heard  to  entreat  them 
publicly:  "Buvez  de  Veau  de  vie,  buvez  de  Veau 
de  vie,  mes  peres!"  He  meant  the  water  of 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ENGLAND     105 

life,  but  the  witty  French  inquired  if  brandy 
was  the  English  sacrament. 

Religious  life  in  England  is  at  its  best  in 
dealing  with  the  foetid  slums,  which  en- 
cumber the  great  cities  of  the  land.  The 
High  Church  sent  out  men  devoted  and  true, 
of  whom  Father  Dolling  was  reckoned  an 
Anglican  Vincent  de  Paul.  Though  disliking 
ritualism,  Archbishop  Alexander  told  me  he 
once  went  to  confirm  some  of  Dolling's  dis- 
ciples in  a  back  slum,  who  rose  up  singing 
and  pronounced  "We  are  marching  to  the 
goal"  as  though  it  were  gaol.  "Only  too  true, 
poor  fellows,"  whispered  Dolling,  who  was  an 
Irishman,  across  the  chancel  to  the  Arch- 
bishop. 

England's  greatest  social  and  religious  dan- 
ger lay  in  those  slums.  They  remain  hotbeds  of 
disease  and  unrest,  which  are  not  allayed  by 
the  efforts  of  temperance  workers  on  the  one 
hand  or  by  bouts  of  drunken  pleasure  on  the 
other.  Born  in  original  gin  may  be  said  of 
most  slum  babies,  one-half  of  whose  survivors 
to  manhood  are  found  unfit  for  military  service. 
Drops  of  oil  are  dropped  on  the  howling  ocean 
of  greater  London.  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
have  founded  settlements  of  well-meaning 
students,  but  critics  have  reported  them  as 


106      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

only  an  expensive  way  of  showing  the  poor 
how  the  rich  live.  Nevertheless,  the  inculca- 
tion of  muscular  Christianity  by  a  band  of 
stalwarts  is  not  valueless,  even  if  young  bur- 
glars are  sometimes  given  the  benefit  of  a  gym- 
nastic training ! 

The  present  Bishop  of  London  sprang  to 
fame  from  Oxford  House.  Perhaps  he  is  the 
typical  modern  bishop.  For  ever  photographed 
and  paraded  in  the  papers,  he  can  be  suave 
and  cheery  to  everybody.  He  preaches  a 
"jolly"  theology.  He  is  fonder  of  making  a 
good  phrase  than  points  in  controversy.  He 
could  not  help  describing  the  Great  War  as 
"The  Nailed  Hand  versus  the  Mailed  Fist." 
He  has  no  pretensions  except  what  the  High 
Church  insists  on  giving  him.  He  slaps  his 
curates  on  the  back  and  calls  the  working 
man  "Mate."  He  can  crack  a  harmless  joke 
about  church  to  show  he  is  a  layman,  after  all, 
and  explain  to  a  Londoner  that  Christ  was 
really  more  of  a  sportsman  than  a  Sunday- 
school  teacher. 

The  most  successful  of  his  clergy,  Preben- 
dary Carlile,  once  startled  us  at  Cambridge 
by  referring  to  the  Good  Shepherd  from  the 
university  pulpit  as  "the  Divine  Fox-hunter!" 
His  Church  Army  is  the  one  success  of  modern 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ENGLAND     107 

Anglicanism.  When  so  much  gush  is  spoken 
of  Divine  love,  he  showed  that  its  practice 
meant  loving  the  unlovable.  To  love  the 
lovely  is  easy  to  gods  or  men. 

On  the  whole,  England  has  but  a  loose  hold 
on  Christianity,  which  is  left  to  the  individual. 
The  Salvation  Army  men  have  swept  up  the 
refuse  of  her  pinchbeck  Babylons,  but  they 
have  won  their  real  success  as  an  imperial 
sociological  bureau.  The  High  Churches  with 
their  free  gifts  and  lighted  candles  dot  the 
slums  like  Christmas  trees  planted  artificially 
in  a  dreary  jungle.  It  is  the  system  of  bribing 
souls  which  has  lost  England  to  the  churches. 
Snobbery  has  driven  away  the  poor.  The 
fashionable  churches  count  their  coronets, 
and  the  middle-class  chapels  advertise  their 
carpet-knights. 

The  Church  of  England  reigns  chiefly  as  a  so- 
cial club,  with  which  are  deposited  the  moral 
standards  of  society.  There  are  more  people  in 
London  society  to-day  who  believe  in  their  fam- 
ily ghosts  than  in  the  resurrection  of  Christ. 
Superstition  has  thrived  oddly  in  London,  as 
it  throve  in  the  later  Roman  Empire,  to  the 
disregard  of  the  old-fashioned  deities.  I  have 
known  an  outgoing  governor  consult  a  clair- 
voyant, and  ladies  who  prefer  palmists  to 


108      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

confessors.  And  I  once  attended  a  seance  in 
Grosvenor  Square,  where  the  recently  deceased 
wife  of  an  Irish  viceroy  sent  messages  to  her 
friends  in  society.  High  personages  frequent 
the  boudoir  of  Endor.  I  suppose  there  are 
few  who  have  not  consulted  "Mrs.  Robinson," 
the  principal  witch  to  London  society.  The 
most  curious  superstition  prevalent  is  the  use 
Protestant  ladies  make  of  St.  Anthony  of 
Padua  to  find  lost  jewels  or  to  help  them  win 
at  bridge.  I  have  even  known  a  relic  of  that 
much-tried  saint  used  to  help  a  race-horse  in 
the  Derby. 

The  only  genuine  native  expression  of  reli- 
gion is  the  much-derided  Nonconformist  Con- 
science, which  is  entirely  occupied  with  the 
public  care  of  two  commandments.  There  is 
no  reason  to  consider  English  public  men  more 
moral  than  the  French,  except  that  they  must 
be  careful  not  to  be  found  out.  In  France  a 
politician's  private  life  is  never  scanned  un- 
less a  woman  figures  in  his  death,  as  in  the 
sinister  cases  of  Gambetta,  Boulanger,  and 
President  Faure.  But  in  England,  public 
men  who  are  caught  out  in  their  lifetime 
are  hounded  to  political  or  actual  death.  On 
the  day  of  judgment  the  middle  classes  of 
England  will  point  very  triumphantly  to  the 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ENGLAND     109 

most  prominent  scapegoats  they  succeeded  in 
nailing  to  God's  barn  door,  of  whom  the  no- 
blest and  hardest  treated  was  Parnell. 

The  English  people  will  always  shrink  from 
blasphemy  and  try  to  keep  respectable,  but 
it  cannot  be  said  that  there  is  a  Christian 
England  in  the  sense  that  there  is  a  Christian 
Russia,  or  a  Christian  Ireland.  The  deep 
religious  sense  which  underlay  "Merrie  Eng- 
land" seems  only  likely  to  return  under  the 
stress  of  deep  national  humiliation  and  sor- 
row. What,  indeed,  was  asked  by  the  Divine 
Prophet,  to  whom  the  Church  of  England  is 
officially  dedicated,  if  ye  gain  the  whole  world, 
and  lose  your  own  soul? 


THE  POLITICIANS 

THE  history  of  modern  England  is  the  history 
of  English  politics.  No  growth  could  be  more 
native  than  the  legislation  of  compromise 
through  compromise.  Though  the  House  of 
Commons  has  seen  a  gentlemanly  game  become 
a  class  gamble,  the  system  remains  a  regulated 
contest  between  those  who  are  in  and  those 
who  are  out  of  power.  The  object  of  each  is 
to  supplant  the  other  with  a  more  popular 
edition  of  each  other's  schemes.  Once  in  a 
generation  there  is  a  struggle  for  principles. 
Over  the  Reform  Bill,  Home  Rule,  and  the 
House  of  Lords,  men  were  ready  to  sacrifice 
their  political  lives. 

Ever  since  the  Tories  were  unwise  enough 
to  support  the  Stuarts,  the  great  Whig  families 
have  ruled  England.  After  the  Reform  Bill 
of  1832,  the  Whigs  took  the  middle  classes 
under  their  tutelage.  After  that  of  1867, 
Whigs  and  Tories  divided  the  working  men. 
The  advent  of  Irish  and  Labour  parties  spoiled 
the  game.  The  old  Whigs  were  a  race  of 
no 


THE  POLITICIANS  111 

material-minded  optimists,  who  had  made 
their  idea  of  liberty  a  tyrannous  fetich.  The 
Tories  remained  a  secluded  class,  whose 
haughty  pessimism  was  only  relieved  by  oc- 
casional and  adventurous  bids  for  power. 
The  modern  Liberal  is  a  humanised  and  vul- 
garised Whig.  He  has  continued  a  domestic 
sentiment  for  aboriginal  races  and  the  foreign 
policy,  which  enabled  England  to  lord  Europe 
without  having  to  pay  or  fight  for  the  privilege. 
They  are  the  class  whom  Napoleon  gibed  for 
shopkeepers,  and  shop  they  have  kept  ever 
since  under  divine  and  sometimes  royal  pat- 
ronage. But  the  Liberals  were  no  hypocrites 
in  going  to  war  for  Belgium.  "  Suffer  the  lit- 
tle nations  "  was  a  Gladstonian  text,  though 
Parnell  complained  that  Ireland  was  forgotten. 
I  heard  a  leading  statesman  whisper  that  the 
German  invasion  of  Belgium  inclined  him  to 
believe  in  the  Divine  government  of  the 
universe.  Nothing  less  could  have  brought 
in  John  Bull. 

The  Conservative  party  is  built  upon  an 
outvoted  squirarchy  and  a  state  Church  which 
is  in  a  minority  in  the  state.  As  a  political 
force  they  have  held  terms  of  power,  thanks 
to  wars  and  war  scares.  They  have  placed 
their  trust  in  brilliant  adventures  ever  since 


114      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Jacobite  days,  and  they  have  maintained  the 
pomp  and  prestige  of  Empire. 

Out  of  the  brilliant  "Young  England" 
episode  they  drew  Disraeli.  They  suffered 
his  leadership  as  the  price  of  political  victory, 
as  later  they  underwent  complete  collapse  for 
the  sake  of  another  novus  homo,  Chamberlain. 
Disraeli's  career  was  a  romance  such  as  no 
Eastern  vizier  or  Western  plutocrat  could  tell. 
He  began  as  a  pioneer  in  dress  and  an  aesthete 
of  words.  It  was  Disraeli,  and  not  Oscar  Wilde, 
who  wrote:  "I  like  a  sailor's  life  much,  though 
it  spoils  the  toilette!"  Wilde  wrote  his  life 
into  plays,  but  Disraeli  was  his  own  actor. 
Wilde  accused  nature  of  copying  literature, 
but  Disraeli  actually  made  his  novels  come 
true.  In  Tancred,  written  in  the  thirties,  he 
described  the  military  occupation  of  Cyprus 
which  he  carried  out  as  a  prime  minister 
forty  years  later.  As  a  Jew  he  had  no  com- 
punction in  threatening  white  Russia  with 
black  Indians  on  behalf  of  an  Asiatic  power 
like  Turkey.  It  was  a  striking  but  accursed 
policy  to  bring  Indian  troops  to  Europe.  Un- 
fortunately, it  took  root,  and  we  have  heard 
a  Minister  threaten  "Gurkhas  to  Potsdam." 
That  a  Christian  Kaiser  has  enlisted  Islam 
against  fellow  Christians  cannot  excuse  a 


THE  POLITICIANS  113 

breach  of  this — the  true  Aryan  heresy.  Who- 
soever pits  black  against  white — should  be 
anathema!  There  is  one  Aryan  race  and 
Christ  is  its  prophet! 

Disraeli  alternately  flattered  and  fascinated 
England.  He  began  his  career  by  writing  a 
revolutionary  epic  in  the  plains  of  Troy,  and 
he  ended  by  capping  the  solemn  British  Con- 
stitution with  an  Oriental  tiara.  The  day  of 
his  death  was  added  as  "Primrose  Day"  to 
the  national  calendar,  while  Gladstone's  was 
forgotten  though  it  coincided  with  Ascension 
Day.  Disraeli's  mantle  was  divided  between 
Salisbury  and  Randolph  Churchill.  The  for- 
mer continued  his  foreign  policy,  while  ad- 
mitting that  Disraeli  had  "backed  the  wrong 
horse"  in  supporting  Turkey.  Randolph 
Churchill  inherited  and  perfected  the  ideal  of 
Tory  democracy.  He  made  himself  "Young 
England"  rampant,  and  he  troubled  the  right- 
eous Gladstone  sore. 

Of  Randolph  Churchill  I  have  a  slight 
memory.  He  was  my  uncle  by  marriage,  and 
I  was  his  first  godson.  He  had  married  an 
American  in  days  when  such  an  alliance  was 
considered  as  experimental  as  mating  with 
Martians.  There  was  a  conservative  suspi- 
cion against  American  wives,  but  Randolph  be- 


114      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

longed  to  the  noble  army  of  Progressives.  His 
career  was  too  brilliant  to  be  lasting.  I  only 
remember  him  as  the  fallen  ex-Chancellor  given 
over  to  haunting  regrets  and  unattainable  de- 
sires. He  scarcely  noticed  the  presence  of 
children  in  the  house. 

In  those  days  Winston  was  a  fearless  sandy- 
haired  youth  occupied  with  the  custody  of  a 
moated  stronghold  called  "the  den"  and  the 
drilling  of  a  dozen  nervous  boys.  For  Winston 
his  father  always  used  the  dimissory  mood. 
Yet  few  sons  have  done  more  for  their  fathers. 
But  Randolph  was  not  responsible  for  his 
inability  to  appreciate  Winston's  budding 
genius.  He  was  suffering  an  agonising  decline 
from  the  political  world  in  which  he  once  had 
his  whole  being.  The  story  has  been  told 
with  dispassionate  pathos  in  Winston's  Life 
of  his  father — perhaps  the  greatest  filial  trib- 
ute in  the  English  language.  No  antagonist 
could  have  passed  Randolph's  steel  but  his 
own  reckless  blade.  Like  a  political  Saul,  he 
fell  finally  upon  his  own  weapon.  Vain  trips 
were  made  to  Africa,  Asia,  and  America,  but 
health  and  balance  were  denied  to  a  brain 
still  winged  with  genius  and  weighted  with 
its  ambitions.  The  collapse  of  an  aeroplane 
in  mid-air  is  always  more  terrible  than  the 


THE  POLITICIANS  115 

overturning  of  a  hackney-cab  in  the  street. 
Randolph  fell  from  meteoric  heights,  and 
men  wondered  as  much  as  they  pitied. 

In  the  schoolroom  at  home  we  tasted 
strange  fruits,  like  the  fruits  of  the  Bible, 
which  he  brought  back  from  his  travels,  and 
the  youngest  of  us  played  with  Oriental  dolls  he 
remembered  to  buy  for  us.  During  his  dying 
dash  through  Japan  he  purchased  whole  em- 
poriums with  the  magnificence  of  the  reputed 
milord.  Eccentric  though  he  became,  it  is 
said  that  the  Orientals  did  not  find  him  madder 
than  other  Englishmen !  I  do  not  know  any- 
thing nobler  than  his  wife's  devotion  during 
his  agony.  Together  with  a  doctor  she  ac- 
companied him  on  that  nightmare  trip  round 
the  world,  exposed  to  the  lynx  eyes  of  the 
press  and  the  subtler  advances  of  disease. 
She  attended  him  to  dinners,  where  he  was 
liable  to  substitute  well-known  truths  for 
conventional  courtesies  in  his  speech,  and  she 
cheerfully  crossed  the  tropical  seas,  when  it 
was  necessary  to  include  a  leaden  casket 
among  their  baggage.  I  cannot  withhold 
this  tribute  to  my  aunt,  though  she  has  since 
achieved  more  mundane  fame  as  the  editor 
of  the  first  Magazine  de  luxe,  as  a  playwright, 
and  the  captain  of  a  hospital  ship. 


116      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Early  in  1895  Randolph  returned,  and  died 
amid  a  burst  of  sympathy  such  as  was  ac- 
corded to  Byron,  whose  genius  he  resembled 
in  some  ways.  Endowed  with  brilliances  of 
verse  and  speechcraft  respectively,  they  were 
the  spendthrifts  of  their  own  minds.  In- 
tractable to  would-be  superiors,  contemptuous 
of  native  stupidity,  and  careless  of  conventions, 
they  amazed  a  bourgeois  England.  Rejected 
at  home,  they  were  hailed  as  dazzling  types  of 
their  race  abroad.  Keenly  alive  to  adventure, 
they  trailed  the  bleeding  pageant  of  their 
lives  overseas.  Finally,  they  wore  themselves 
out  in  impossible  causes — Byron  in  the  at- 
tempt to  achieve  freedom  for  a  worthless 
Greece,  and  Randolph  in  the  yet  forlorner 
hope  of  associating  genius  with  the  policy  of 
the  Tory  party. 

The  people  loved  Randolph  because  he  was 
domineering,  utterly  fearless,  and  a  little  un- 
scrupulous. As  a  schoolboy  he  had  shown 
the  same  traits.  At  Eton  he  had  three  fags 
whom  he  used  to  summon  by  a  system  of 
knocks  on  the  floor — one  for  Trower,  two  for 
Freer  (my  informant),  and  three  for  Beres- 
ford-Pierce.  He  ordered  Freer  once  to  write 
out  some  lines  he  had  incurred  as  a  punish- 
ment. As  a  result,  Freer  could  not  do  his  own 


THE  POLITICIANS  1 17 

work  and  appealed  to  his  fagmaster.  Ran- 
dolph sent  for  all  available  Greek  and  Latin 
lexicons,  and,  secreting  Freer  at  the  bottom 
of  the  stairs,  hurled  himself  down  with  the 
lexicons  and  disappeared.  Result — the  Dame 
ran  out  and  found  Freer  suffering  from  an 
apparent  accident  which  incapacitated  him 
from  going  into  school,  but  not  from  writing 
out  Randolph's  lines. 

In  many  senses  Randolph  was  not  a  Vic- 
torian statesman,  but  he  knew  how  to  em- 
ploy a  tart  and  careless  truth  of  speech,  which 
often  made  Gladstone's  involved  wisdom  ap- 
pear more  involved  and  less  wise.  In  France 
he  could  have  played  the  part  of  a  Boulanger, 
and  in  America,  perhaps  that  of  a  Roosevelt, 
who  has  certainly  tried  to  make  his  party  as 
Progressive  as  Randolph  wished  to  make  his. 
Similarly,  both  found  refreshment  in  African 
hunting  trips,  which  each  described  by  letter 
to  a  wondering  world.  Though  he  mocked  all 
that  was  dear  to  bourgeoisie,  he  came  nearer 
than  any  of  his  generation  to  the  "Merrie 
England,"  which,  deep  under  Puritanism  and 
the  Nonconformist  Conscience,  still  underlies 
English  character.  He  was  not  abashed  to 
call  his  fellow  Ministers,  W.  H.  Smith  and 
Lord  Cross,  "Marshall  and  Snelgrove,"  or  to 


118      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

brand  Gladstone  as  "the  Moloch  of  Midlo- 
thian." His  dream  was  for  the  old-fashioned 
Tory  party  to  be  sustained  by  the  votes  of  the 
crowds  who  vibrated  to  his  voice.  But  from 
Tory  democracy  both  his  party  and  himself 
came  to  be  disillusioned,  and  when  he  slipped 
his  own  legions  trod  him  underfoot.  With  cyn- 
ical candour  Salisbury  accepted  his  resignation, 
because,  as  he  said,  he  had  always  thought 
him  mad. 

I  can  remember  Salisbury  at  the  memorial 
service  for  Randolph  in  Westminster.  He 
seemed  only  to  need  a  white  ruff  and  a  velvet 
doublet  to  become  one  of  those  Elizabethan 
statesmen  who  knew  so  well  when  to  wait 
and  when  to  act,  when  to  bite  and  when  to 
swallow — whose  speech  sounded  most  generous 
when  it  was  most  ironic.  An  Abbey  requiem 
is  the  most  impressive  rite  left  to  England. 
The  organ  tones  seem  to  touch  the  statues  of 
the  mighty  dead  to  attention,  and  for  a  mo- 
ment the  dull  glow  of  tapers  casts  a  flicker 
upon  their  viewless  eyes — as  yet  another  mem- 
ory is  added  to  their  oblivion. 

Randolph  had  foreseen  some  such  scene  in 
a  cynical  mood,  and  had  even  prophesied 
what  a  charming  letter  Gladstone  would  write 
to  his  widow  proposing  burial  in  the  Abbey. 
He  was  happier  buried  near  Blenheim. 


THE  POLITICIANS  119 

And  here  it  may  be  noted  as  a  characteristic 
of  dying  chivalry  in  English  politics  that  no 
one  paid  more  deference  or  attention  to  Ran- 
dolph's last  broken  speeches  than  his  old  rival, 
Gladstone.  It  may  be  recalled  that  when 
Lord  Tweedmouth  suffered  mental  breakdown 
while  speaking  in  the  Lords  on  Campbell- 
Bannerman's  death  no  one  in  politics  or  the 
press  took  the  slightest  advantage. 

The  Tory  party  could  raise  no  new  star 
after  Randolph  until  they  adopted  Chamber- 
lain, an  ex-Republican,  who  had  shocked  their 
fathers  even  more  than  Disraeli  had  amused 
their  grandfathers.  His  advent  followed  a  cu- 
rious sequence.  When  Dilke  and  Chamber- 
lain together  formed  Gladstone's  radical  wing, 
they  could  pull  the  old  man  unto  restiveness. 
A  fateful  divorce  case  dislodged  Dilke  from 
public  life,  and  Chamberlain  found  himself  less 
powerful  alone.  He  was  glad  of  the  Home- 
Rule  issue  to  change  parties,  but  his  subse- 
quent policy  of  tariff  reform  ruined  both  him- 
self and  his  new  party.  It  was  not  tariff 
reform  so  much  as  imperial  unity  which  sprang 
from  the  Boer  War.  Chamberlain,  who  be- 
gan as  a  Unitarian  Sunday-school  teacher, 
brought  down  the  pillars  of  the  House  of  Lords 
in  his  fall.  Tragic  ends  befell  the  last  of  the 
Victorian  statesmen — Churchill,  Parnell,  Dilke, 


120      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

and  Chamberlain.  Failure  grim  and  even 
ghastly  clouded  their  last  phases.  Chamber- 
Iain,  the  last  of  them,  died  melodramatically  a 
few  weeks  before  the  Great  War  was  to  test 
the  Empire  he  had  dreamed  to  make  an  Em- 
pire. 

Churchill  and  Chamberlain  bequeathed  their 
sons  to  the  Tory  party.  It  would  be  difficult 
to  say  which  created  the  greatest  difficulty 
to  that  party — Winston  Churchill  by  leaving 
or  Austen  Chamberlain  by  remaining.  Win- 
ston I  knew  ever  since  he  was  the  enfant  terrible 
of  a  home  circle.  As  a  boy  he  was  untidy,  un- 
manageable, and  quick  of  speech.  When  he 
returned  from  Harrow  with  a  torn  jacket  he 
replied  to  all  remonstrance:  "How  should  I 
not  be  out  of  elbows,  when  my  father  is  out 
of  office?"  His  adventurous  spirit  fastened 
on  King  Solomon's  Mines  as  his  favourite 
reading.  He  read  it  twelve  times,  and  once 
drove  its  author  haggard  in  the  course  of  a 
cross-examination.  "What  did  you  mean?" 
he  insisted  on  one  disputed  point,  and  the 
author  confessed  he  did  not  know  himself. 
Once  Winston  was  taken  to  the  Tower  of 
London,  but  declined  both  train  or  bus  as  too 
prosaic  means  of  conveyance.  Finally  he  sent 
cheerful  word  home  that  he  had  started  "with 


THE  POLITICIANS  121 

a  drunken  cabman  and  a  frisky  horse!"  The 
secret  of  his  soul  is  adventure. 

Though  his  Harrow  Master,  Bishop  Weldon, 
prophesied  his  future  success  just  as  Bishop 
Sam  Wilberforce  had  prophesied  it  of  Ran- 
dolph, Winston  learned  as  little  at  Harrow  as 
his  father  at  Eton.  He  showed  his  typical 
courage  there  by  embracing  his  old  nurse 
amid  the  mockery  of  the  school.  Under  his 
fighting  mask  he  has  always  carried  a  generous 
heart.  I  think  he  was  the  only  Minister  of 
the  Crown  who  wept  in  the  House  at  the  dec- 
laration of  war. 

He  was  self-educated,  for  he  was  never  sent 
to  a  University.  He  went  into  the  army,  and 
taught  himself  literature  and  history  in  his 
tent  at  night  during  his  campaigns — of  which 
he  rapidly  saw  four  on  three  continents. 
During  the  Boer  War  he  came  down  to  Eton 
and  gave  me  the  best  advice  I  have  ever  heard 
on  education:  "Do  not  turn  your  mind  into 
a  damned  ammunition  wagon,  but  into  a 
rifle  to  fire  off  other  people's  ammunition." 
When  he  entered  politics,  journalism  lost  a 
vivid  pen.  The  combination  of  American  and 
Marlborough  blood  across  the  ages  produced 
what  might  have  been  a  super  war  corre- 
spondent. No  individual  in  the  cabinet  knew 


122      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

the  smack  and  taste  of  war  as  Winston,  who 
was  one  of  the  few  Englishmen  who  could 
appreciate  Mary  Johnston's  wonderful  im- 
pressionist novel  of  the  American  Civil  War — 
Cease  Firing.  He  found  it  so  true  to  war's  de- 
tails that  he  could  not  understand  how  a 
woman  could  have  written  it. 

His  career  is  the  most  brilliant  hi  recent 
politics.  The  best  English  politicians  are 
necessarily  adventurers.  They  can  only  enter 
the  lists  after  single  duel  with  the  largest 
antagonist  in  sight.  Disraeli  sought  out  Peel, 
Randolph  Churchill  challenged  Gladstone, 
Lloyd  George  won  fame  by  bearding  Cham- 
berlain in  his  den,  and  Winston  fastened 
mercilessly  on  Balfour.  He  mocked  him  out 
of  office  perhaps  a  little  bitterly,  remembering 
his  father's  desertion.  His  father  called  Glad- 
stone "an  old  man  in  a  hurry"  in  the  same 
mood  that  Winston  compared  Balfour  in  polit- 
ical rout  to  Charley's  Aunt — "still  running." 

Winston  passed  from  Colonial  to  Home  Of- 
fice, and  from  Home  Office  to  Admiralty.  He 
joined  the  Admiralty  a  "little  navyite,"  but 
he  immediately  adopted  serious  views  on  sea 
power.  He  devoted  himself  to  testing  sub- 
marines rather  than  "teasing  goldfish,"  as 
he  called  his  attacks  on  plutocracy.  Intimate 


THE  POLITICIANS  123 

friends  noticed  a  change  in  his  character. 
Thought  succeeded  ebullition,  and  he  was 
the  first  of  the  cabinet  to  read  the  writing  on 
the  wall  of  the  world.  Three  years  before  the 
war  he  confessed  his  fears  in  private.  I  re- 
member once  at  lunch  comparing  the  Persian 
menace  in  Greek  history  to  the  German 
scare.  Instantly  his  face  hardened. 

He  returned  from  the  German  manoeuvres, 
which  he  witnessed  as  the  Kaiser's  guest,  with 
one  grim  comment  on  his  lips:  "I  can  only 
thank  God  there  is  a  sea  between  England 
and  that  army!"  Some  have  since  seen 
reason  to  give  thanks  that  he  had  the  super- 
vision of  that  sea. 

There  were  public  prophets  like  Roberts 
and  Beresford,  who  shouted  their  alarms  from 
the  housetops,  but  the  public  treated  their 
speech  as  it  always  does  the  speech  of  Irishmen. 
Only  in  time  of  war  are  the  Irish  of  serious 
account.  Beresford's  epigram — "battleships 
are  cheaper  than  battles" — was  surely  worth 
considering.  The  German  war  scare,  dating 
from  1900,  fell  flat  in  England  because  people 
remembered  a  similar  French  scare  as  well  as 
the  cry  of  "Bear"  which  had  been  raised  once 
too  often  in  the  seventies  against  Russia. 

At  the  Admiralty  Winston  found  there  were 


124      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

closer  watchers  and  more  interested  critics 
scrutinising  him  than  any  at  home.  Not  for 
nothing  were  codes  stolen  and  ships  dogged 
by  spies  from  sea  to  sea.  He  realised  what 
was  coming,  and  he  had  just  the  time,  though 
not  all  the  support,  necessary  to  put  the  grand 
fleet  in  order  for  the  day. 

His  contribution  to  the  national  defence 
was  the  only  part  which  on  trial  proved  pre- 
pared. I  remember  passing  through  the  Ad- 
miralty and  the  War  Office  consecutively  in 
August,  1914.  The  latter  seemed  in  a  state  of 
chaotic  confusion,  the  passages  choked  with 
supernumerary  clerks  writing  and  feeding  be- 
hind screens.  The  Admiralty  was  like  a  silent 
morgue.  Only  an  occasional  messenger  passed 
down  the  corridors.  In  the  midst  sat  the 
Lords  of  Admiralty  before  a  board  with  the 
positions  of  the  ships  marked  in  miniature 
upon  the  seven  seas  beneath  the  gigantic 
wireless  that  communicated  with  them  in 
as  many  minutes. 

If  Winston  had  died  on  the  day  the  fleet 
was  mobilised,  he  would  have  fulfilled  his 
ambition,  which  had  been  to  enjoy  a  decade 
of  power  and  achievement.  He  used  to  say 
sadly  of  the  spiritual  side  of  life  for  which  he 
had  so  little  time:  "One  world  is  enough  at 


THE  POLITICIANS  125 

a  time."  Though  no  devotee,  he  was  reverent 
because  he  had  imagination.  After  his  escape 
from  prison  in  Pretoria  he  confessed:  "There 
is  a  God  that  looks  after  Winston."  Religious 
intolerance  was  as  distasteful  to  him  as  of- 
ficial stupidity,  and  he  found  enough  of  both 
in  each  of  his  parties. 

In  the  day  of  achievement  he  was  replaced 
for  unknown  reasons,  possibly  not  unassociated 
with  public  clamour.  There  was  something 
very  generous  in  the  welcome  he  gave  to  Bal- 
four,  his  father's  old  supplanter  and  twenty- 
five  years  later  his.  Randoph  Churchill  had 
once  written  from  political  exile:  "So  Arthur 
Balfour  is  really  leader  and  Tory  democracy  is 
at  an  end."  Winston  could  have  noted  in  his 
father's  words:  "After  all,  A.  B.  cannot  beat 
my  record." 

Only  dire  extremity  induced  the  Liberals 
to  call  Lord  Lansdowne  and  Balfour  out  of 
retirement — a  historic  pair.  If  Lord  Lans- 
downe was  really  the  last  of  the  Whigs,  there 
were  reasons  for  regarding  Balfour  as  the  last 
of  the  Tories.  The  Tory  leader,  Bonar  Law, 
was  a  colonial,  and  real  Tories  are  born  not 
imported.  Lansdowne  found  himself  excusing 
the  official  nightmare  as  the  South  African 
disasters  fifteen  years  before.  In  1900  Arnold 


126      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

White   wrote  in  Efficiency  and  Empire  of  a 
supposed  European  war: 

Our  institutions  would  have  been  found  wanting.  We 
should  have  listened  to  Lord  Lansdowne  .  .  .  revealing  the 
fact  of  his  being  "struck"  with  our  deficiencies.  In  that  case 
we  should  have  had  our  Colenso,  our  Stormberg,  and  Magers- 
fontein  on  a  larger  scale. 

Fifteen  years  have  brought  them  on  a  colos- 
sal scale.  Few  things  have  been  more  pathetic 
than  Balfour  and  Lansdowne  recalled  from 
grass  to  drag  the  clumsy  plough  of  coalition. 

English  history  is  an  automatic  repeater. 
The  same  character  under  similar  circum- 
stances produces  the  same  results.  Mr.  Wing- 
field  Stratford,  the  most  patriotic  of  historians, 
compared  the  England  of  the  Crimean  War 
with  that  of  the  eighteenth-century  wars  with 
Spain  and  found  "the  same  swaggering  con- 
fidence, the  same  choice  of  a  safe  enemy  .  .  . 
a  reluctant  chief  Minister,  the  same  criminal 
unreadiness  for  war."  It  was  to  be  the  same 
before  1914.  Asquith  was  as  reluctant  to  go 
to  war  with  Germany  as  his  prototype  Aber- 
deen had  been  to  attack  Russia.  It  was  Win- 
ston Churchill  and  Haldane  who  convinced 
the  cabinet  of  the  necessity  of  war  in  1914. 
But  the  old  tradition  to  be  unprepared  and 
to  neglect  warning  had  remained.  From  the 


THE  POLITICIANS  127 

Hundred  Years'  War  to  Waterloo  all  Eng- 
land's wars  had  pivoted  on  the  Low  Coun- 
tries, yet  at  her  height  of  world  supremacy  she 
was  unable  to  save  Belgium  at  her  gates. 
Antwerp  from  being  a  bolt  in  the  blue  should 
have  exercised  her  strategy  ever  since  Glad- 
stone wrote  to  his  War  Minister  in  1870:  "What 
I  should  like  is  to  study  the  means  of  sending 
twenty  thousand  men  to  Antwerp  with  as 
much  promptitude  as  at  the  Trent  affair  we 
sent  ten  thousand  men  to  Canada." 

But  England  has  preferred  to  send  be- 
lated expeditions  to  meet  disasters  elsewhere. 
Neither  the  old-fashioned  Whigs  nor  Tories 
were  responsible  for  the  government  which 
faced  the  war.  It  was  a  middle-class  collec- 
tion with  some  help  from  Jews  and  Celts. 
A  bourgeoisie  is  only  effective  under  piping 
conditions  of  peace,  but  war  requires  a  mili- 
tary aristocracy.  It  is  not  wise  to  abolish 
feudalism  from  civilisation,  while  leaving  its 
close  relative,  war,  on  the  horizon. 

The  English  political  system  has  attracted 
lawyers  rather  than  business  men.  The  glib 
tongue  is  even  more  successful  than  the  ready 
purse.  Part  of  the  political  game  is  to  be  able 
to  prove  that  whitewashed  blackness  is  nearer 
white  than  black.  Transferred  to  a  scene 


128      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

where  traditions  and  business  sense  can  be 
discounted,  great  lawyers  quickly  become  great 
politicians.  The  turning-point  in  English  his- 
tory found  an  English,  a  Welsh,  a  Scotch,  and  a 
Jewish  lawyer  taking  turns  at  the  wheel — As- 
quith,  Lloyd  George,  Haldane,  and  Isaacs. 

Since  the  opening  of  the  century,  the  Em- 
pire had  prayed  for  a  great  man,  and  though 
Lloyd  George  gave  the  sound  and  Grey  af- 
fected the  silence  of  one — the  Empire  still 
prays.  Lloyd  George,  like  O'Connell  before 
him,  was  the  Celt  harrowing  Saxon  institu- 
tions. Grey  was  the  trump-card  and  the 
mystery  man  of  the  cabinet.  The  peace  of 
Europe  seemed  involved  in  his  discretion. 
"Straightforwardness"  was  always  put  for- 
ward, and  deservedly,  as  his  virtue.  But  a 
time  has  come  when  people  have  begun  to  ask 
if  straightforwardness  is  all  they  required  of 
their  diplomatists  or  sheer  courage  the  only 
needful  of  the  soldier.  There  was  an  old 
teacher  of  Mathematics  at  Cambridge  who 
used  to  counsel  "a  little  low  cunning"  in 
meeting  problems.  Had  Grey  really  the  abil- 
ity to  foresee  and  the  patriotism  to  realise  that 
England  would  never  have  a  better  chance 
to  defeat  Germany?  Or  was  he  only  a  diplo- 
matic angler  adrift,  casting  a  feverish  but 


THE  POLITICIANS  129 

lucky  fly  over  the  Balkan  eddy?  A  time  has 
since  come  when  his  position  in  the  Balkans 
has  been  compared  to  "Parsival  at  a  poker 
party."  Whether  he  foresaw  events  or  not,  he 
suffered  them  to  do  the  work.  He  has  the 
credit  for  having  licked  the  entente  into  shape 
after  it  had  been  swaddled  by  Edward  VII. 
Between  them  they  prepared,  though  they  did 
not  plot,  side-currents  leading  to  the  Great 
War.  History  will  decide  which,  or  whether 
either,  can  claim  to  be  called  "Edward  the 
Peacemaker."  But  Grey's  fellow  countrymen 
will  forgive  him,  for  lying  is  not  a  national  tal- 
ent, and  they  have  since  taken  to  heart  the 
most  succinct  sentence  in  Carlyle — "Diplo- 
macy is  clouds:  beating  of  your  enemies  is 
land  and  sea." 

In  default  of  the  heaven-sent,  Herbert  As- 
quith  led.  Brilliantly  read,  practical,  and 
legally  argumentative,  he  was  the  exemplar 
of  Jowett  of  Balliol.  He  harnessed  the  Non- 
conformist Conscience  and  Free  Trade  to  a 
rumbling  old  doctrinaire  coach,  if  not  to  a 
fiery  chariot — and  in  it  he  drove  through  the 
Lords  and  over  the  Union.  A  plain,  blunt 
man  fit  to  rule,  but  not  particularly  inspired  to 
save  an  Empire — without  much  enthusiasm  or 
humour  to  spare.  Very  symbolic  is  the  story 


130      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

told  of  him  at  an  entertainment  of  French 
delegates.  Asquith  wore  the  uniform  of  an 
elder  brother  of  Trinity  House,  which  drew  a 
query  from  a  visitor.  The  incarnation  of  Eng- 
lish Dissent  explained:  "  Je  suis  le  frere  aine 
de  la  Trinite!"  The  Frenchman  bowed  po- 
litely and  said:  "Ah — nous  n'avons  pas  $a 
en  France!" 

Asquith  may  be  judicially  stupid,  but  he  is 
never  unreasonably  foolish.  He  refuses  to  be 
unbalanced,  for  he  keeps  his  footing  to  his 
own  subjects.  He  is  suspicious  of  dreamers, 
especially  of  the  fervid  company  of  "cranks 
and  Christs."  He  only  respects  what  he  can 
understand.  Everything  else  appears  to  him 
like  so  much  froth  on  the  changeful  tide  of 
the  world.  He  could  not  appreciate  Ulster's 
ideal,  or  the  imperial  dream  of  the  Jingo,  or 
the  sentiment  of  the  Catholic.  He  offended 
them  all  mortally.  He  would  not  allow  the 
latter  the  simple  satisfaction  of  carrying  the 
Host  through  the  London  streets,  and  he 
underestimated  the  soul  of  the  Ulster  Prot- 
estants. I  remember  his  cynical  remark  on 
hearing  of  Archbishop  Alexander's  dream  of 
reunion  with  Rome:  "He  must  be  in  his 
dotage."  His  branch  of  oratory  has  been  de- 
scribed as  "a  plain  tale  without  any  mis- 


THE  POLITICIANS  131 

sionary  fervour,"  which  could  apply  equally 
to  his  life.  He  has  the  English  prejudice 
against  missionaries,  whether  of  creeds  or  tar- 
iffs. Decency  without  humbug  is  his  motto. 
His  choice  of  Bridges  for  Laureate  was  as 
typical  as  his  selection  of  Lang  for  Archbishop. 
In  each  case  he  chose  culture  without  mysti- 
cism. 

Yet  his  lack  of  imagination  proved  a  strength 
more  than  a  weakness.  He  was  not  aghast 
or  appalled  at  Armageddon  occurring  during 
his  administration.  He  measured  events  and 
men  from  the  law  courts,  and  the  unveiling  of 
history  was  to  him  like  a  political  panorama. 
Common  sense  and  practical  wisdom  upheld 
a  man  to  whom  the  splendour  of  failure,  the 
idealism  of  the  fanatic,  and  death  for  a  dream 
meant  little.  It  was  not  in  his  blood  or  in 
his  upbringing.  His  college  teacher,  Jowett, 
had  mocked  Newman,  and  his  political  leader, 
Gladstone,  betrayed  Gordon.  Yet  these  two, 
Gordon  and  Newman,  were  the  sweetest  Eng- 
lish gentlemen  that  ever  trod  the  earth,  for 
whose  sake  many  have  tried  to  love  a  some- 
what unlovable  race. 

Life  brought  Asquith  great  successes  without 
sharp  trials.  His  son  repeated  his  success  at 
Oxford.  A  most  brilliant  hostess  became  his 


132      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

wife.  Ireland,  Wales,  and  Jewry  bent  their 
necks  to  uphold  his  administration.  In  vain 
Socialist,  Suffragette,  and  Carsonite  raged 
about  his  feet.  Asquith's  easy-chair  seemed 
to  roll  above  the  water-floods. 

With  perfect  equanimity  he  faced  the  World 
War.  When  the  hearts  of  others  were  failing 
them  for  wrath  or  fear,  he  took  his  glass  of 
wine  and  played  his  rubber  of  bridge  after  the 
day's  work.  He  had  the  common  sense  to 
know  that  teetotalism  will  not  vanquish  the 
Hun.  He  retained  mental  elasticity  and  per- 
formed his  allotted  business  as  usual.  He  knew 
perfectly  well  that  he  was  for  the  time  irre- 
placeable. There  are  two  public  men  whom 
the  Great  War  cannot  change  much,  and  who 
were  perhaps  born  to  see  England  through  her 
trouble — the  lineal  descendant  of  "Farmer 
George"  and  the  favourite  disciple  of  Ben- 
jamin Jowett. 


IRELAND  AND  THE  IRISH 

To  write  of  Ireland  among  English  institu- 
tions seems  a  bull  or  as  the  Greeks  called  it,  an 
oxymoron  (sharp  folly).  Nevertheless,  Eng- 
land would  not  be  what  she  is  without  Ireland. 
For  good  or  for  bad,  for  sunshine  or  for  rain 
(chiefly  the  latter),  England  and  Ireland  seem 
doomed  to  cross-entanglement,  with  their  pres- 
ent continually  marred  in  the  future  by  each 
other's  past. 

Whatever  political  trouble  the  Irish  cause 
and  however  many  prizes  of  church  or  state 
are  taken  by  the  Scotch,  the  English  owe 
much  to  the  Celtic  fringe.  Celtic  influences 
have  purged  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  much  original 
Teutonism.  Religion,  and  later  the  sporting 
spirit,  passed  from  the  Celt  into  England.  As 
horse-racing  came  from  Ireland,  so  golf,  the 
grandmother  of  cricket,  came  from  Scotland. 
It  is  symbolic  of  Irish  influences  that  at  one 
time  the  names  of  the  leading  jockeys  and 
Jesuits  in  England  were  drawn  from  the  same 
clans — Rickaby  and  Maher. 

Ireland  is  a  paradox.    The  sages  say  there 

133 


134      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

are  three  paradoxes  which  shall  never  be  un- 
derstood— the  Trinity,  Woman,  and  Ireland, 
but  the  greatest  paradox  is  Ireland.  She  is 
the  exception  to  all  rules.  She  is  the  most 
distressful  and  yet  the  most  easily  contented 
country.  She  is  the  most  Catholic  in  creed, 
and  in  her  folk-lore  the  most  pagan  country 
in  Europe.  Her  people  are  the  most  feudal, 
and  yet  they  produced  O'Connell  the  creator 
of  all  modern  democracy.  They  are  accused 
of  failing  economically  under  both  free  trade 
and  protection.  They  are  accused  of  building 
too  many  Catholic  cathedrals,  but  in  Dublin 
they  have  been  indicted  for  not  building  one 
— (as  though  they  intended  to  take  back 
the  Protestant  erection).  In  sum,  witnesses 
against  them  disagree,  for  Ireland  remains  the 
home  of  the  unexpected.  It  is  only  during  a 
strike. that  Irish  streets  present  any  signs  of 
activity.  She  was  the  only  country  to  in- 
crease her  population  as  the  result  of  being  a 
belligerent  in  a  European  war.  When  gloom 
obscured  the  world,  Ireland  became  "the  one 
bright  spot."  Nevertheless,  it  took  a  war  of 
nations  to  bring  Irish  factions  out  of  that  at- 
mosphere of  suspicion  and  rancour  in  which 
Irish  life  is  lived.  Professor  Jackson  of  Cam- 
bridge, after  serving  on  the  Irish  University 


IRELAND  AND  THE  IRISH      135 

question,  told  us  he  had  made  four  discoveries 
in  Ireland: 

1.  That  everything  is  a  secret. 

2.  That  Englishmen  are  honest  fools. 

3.  That  everybody  is  suspect. 

4.  That  the  best  whisky  is  kept  in  Ireland. 

Behind  the  factions  and  the  politics  of  Ire- 
land live  a  remnant  of  those  who  still  speak 
the  Irish  tongue.  On  the  Kerry  borders,  the 
Connemara  bogs,  and  the  Donegal  Highlands 
lingers  the  oldest  vernacular  speech  in  Europe. 
Gaelic  was  spoken  when  Caesar  landed  in  Brit- 
ain. Compared  to  Gaelic,  English  is  a  mongrel 
without  a  syntax.  An  Irish  scholar  laughs  at 
the  inflection  of  English  verbs  much  as  the 
English  make  fun  of  a  Chinaman's  pidgin- 
English. 

The  Irish  speakers  may  be  illiterate,  but 
their  wisdom  is  older  than  printing.  Theirs 
is  a  week  which  dedicates  no  day  to  Thor. 
They  know  the  stars  by  unclassical  names. 
Even  the  Pole-star  (of  the  Northmen  sailors) 
is  "the  Star  of  Knowledge"  (of  the  Celtic 
Druids)  to  them.  Orion's  Belt  in  Irish  Ireland 
is  "the  King's  Wand."  I  once  collected  names 
by  which  the  stars  were  known  in  Ireland  be- 
fore the  Norman  invasion  from  an  old  woman 
b'ving  between  Muckish  and  Errigal  moun- 


136      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

tains.  She  was  afterward  in  trouble  for  selling 
illicit  liquor,  but  she  had  the  "old  knowledge" 
as  it  is  called.  In  that  part  of  Ireland  the  folk 
live  in  an  atmosphere  of  fairy.  Their  affec- 
tions are  barely  earthly,  for  they  leave  mar- 
riages to  be  fixed  by  the  priest.  The  passion- 
ate go  to  America  or  take  to  drink,  for  their 
women  have  beauty  and  not  fire.  The  Ave 
Maria  has  frozen  their  lips.  But  the  folk  have 
humour  and  bitterness  and  religious  ecstasies 
and  fierce  sports  to  fill  the  emotional  cup 
which  other  peoples  sacrifice  at  one  fell  swoop 
to  lust.  Because  lust  was  not  good  enough, 
the  Celt  invented  romance.  The  Church,  like 
a  wise  old  mother,  has  not  interfered  much 
with  their  custom  and  legend.  In  Gaeldom 
superstition  is  lost  in  imagination,  and  there 
is  sometimes  slight  difference  between  charm 
and  prayer,  except  that  charms  are  always  for 
temporal  needs.  In  an  Irish  household  there 
is  a  hereditary  prayer  for  milking  the  kine, 
another  for  raking  the  ashes  over  the  hearth 
fire,  which  is  never  allowed  to  go  out.  There 
are  prayers  at  bed-making  or  at  catching  sight 
of  the  sun.  There  are  formal  benedictions  for 
taking  snuff  or  for  picking  herbs.  Until  the 
day  of  the  dispensary  doctor  the  Irish  had  a 
fairy  pharmacopoeia.  If  they  did  use  fox  oil 


IRELAND  AND  THE  IRISH      137 

or  a  burnt  swallow,  the  cures  were  not  less 
numerous  than  under  modern  conditions.  In 
the  dark  corners  of  cabins,  in  deserted  lanes, 
and  by  Druid  wells  the  old  ranns  can  still  be 
heard.  It  is  only  the  old  people  who  were 
born  before  the  great  famine  swept  Ireland  to 
the  bone,  who  have  the  "old  knowledge."  An 
old  man,  the  last  story-teller  of  "his  townland, 
once  showed  me  the  blood  charm,  warning  me 
never  to  put  it  to  paper.  He  could  stop  a 
horse  from  bleeding  as  easy  as  he  could  blow 
the  froth  from  it.  I  knew  an  eldest  son  of  an 
eldest  son,  who  was  visited  by  people  from 
Belfast  to  be  charmed  of  their  warts,  and  an 
old  shepherd,  nearly  a  hundred  years  old,  who 
rubbed  men  and  sheep  for  "the  rose"  (ery- 
sipelas). 

In  the  Gaelic  tradition  every  flower  and  beast 
was  remembered  for  the  part  it  played  in  the 
Passion.  Peasants  still  spare  the  beetle  that 
put  the  soldiers  off  the  Lord's  track,  and  re- 
mark that  the  midges  bite  sharp  since  they 
ate  Judas !  Still  they  shudder  at  the  curlew — 
the  Juif  errant  of  the  moors — that  once  mocked 
Calvary.  If  the  curlew's  cry  is  that  of  a  lost 
soul,  the  cheery  chanticleer,  who  proclaims 
some  such  inanity  as  "cock-a-doodle-doo"  to 
the  Saxon  world,  calls  with  every  dawn  to  the 


138      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

reverent  Gael:  "Mac  an  oiyer  slaun!"  (the 
Son  of  the  Virgin  is  safe). 

Love  of  animals  in  Ireland  is  not  confined 
to  the  horse.  The  Irish  saints  admitted  fox 
and  badger  as  monks  into  their  communities. 
There  were  two  modern  bishops  who  took 
their  reverent  dogs  into  their  cathedrals,  of 
whom  one  was  Archbishop  Croke,  the  dread 
of  English  statesmen.  When  he  lay  dying  dur- 
ing Holy  Week  of  1902,  his  pet  dog  entered 
and  sat  solemnly  on  his  empty  throne  between 
the  vested  canons  during  the  service  of  Tene- 
brse.  To  those  present  it  seemed  a  solemn 
sign  of  death.  A  thousand  years  previously 
St.  Columba's  death  was  foretold  by  his  old 
white  horse.  Philosophies  change,  but  things 
that  are  stranger  than  philosophies  do  not. 

Very  curious  customs  surround  the  dead  in 
Ireland  of  which  "the  wake"  and  "the  keen" 
have  been  plagiarised  and  debased  by  writers. 
They  all  spring  from  the  Celtic  belief  (older 
than  St.  Patrick)  that  the  dead  do  not  die. 
Tobacco-pipes  are  often  left  on  graves  in- 
stead of  wreaths,  and  at  old-fashioned  wakes 
offerings  of  snuff  are  piled  on  the  body  of  the 
corpse,  from  which  each  friend  takes  a  pinch. 
Hence  the  familiar  greeting  of  old  folk  ex- 
changing snuff:  "I  never  took  a  better  pinch 


IRELAND  AND  THE  IRISH      139 

off  the  navel" — followed  by  the  time-honoured 
response:  "May  the  souls  of  all  yours  rest  in 
peace  by  the  grace  of  God." 

There  are  a  number  of  funeral  games  re- 
served for  wake  nights  such  as  "Boxing  the 
Connaughtman"  and  "the  Sitting  Brogue." 
As  the  hours  of  night  pass,  the  living  forget 
the  dead  and  dance,  for  to  the  Celts  life  and 
death  are  as  one.  A  priest  told  me  once  of 
an  old  beggar  woman  who  died  in  a  ditch  in 
his  parish.  Of  their  charity  the  neighbours 
waked  her  for  three  merry  nights — till  the 
next  townland  felt  lonesome,  and  begged  the 
loan  of  the  body  for  a  dance  themselves.  It 
was  high  time  before  the  priest  had  her  buried. 
This  spirit  has  reached  the  upper  classes,  for 
on  a  famous  occasion  an  Irish  peer  celebrated 
the  opening  of  a  family  vault  by  a  county 
ball!  The  priests  have  suppressed  wakes  and 
keening  lately.  I  heard  a  pathetic  story  of  a 
priest  who  officially  forbade  the  keen.  Then 
his  brother  was  drowned  and  "he  let  the  piti- 
fulest,  beautifulest  keen  ever  heard  hi  the 
parish."  The  people  have  the  quaint  and 
weird  colouring  in  them  that  is  too  often 
bleached  by  civilisation.  The  invisible  seems 
the  more  likely  to  their  untutored  minds,  and 
the  temporal  not  to  be  depended  upon.  All 


140      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

current  Irish  philosophy  is  summed  in  the 
saying,  "It  will  all  be  the  same  in  a  hundred 
years" — which  in  its  most  important  aspect 
is  true.  The  universal  answer  to  "What  is  the 
time?"  is  "Time  enough."  Only  a  people 
who  have  banked  in  eternity  can  afford  to 
waste  their  time. 

Mystery  and  beauty  still  stalk  the  land. 
I  knew  a  woman  whose  child  was  drowned  in 
a  well,  and  the  child  used  to  pull  her  skirt 
every  time  she  went  to  draw  water.  She  used 
to  touch  barrenness  with  a  twig  of  enchanted 
blackthorn.  She  had  other  children  who  be- 
came prosperous  in  New  York.  Only  two 
generations  separate  the  cultured  Irish-Amer- 
ican millionaire  from  the  poor  but  God-loved 
race  who  habited  Ireland  "from  the  Flood  to 
the  Famine." 

As  the  old  Irish  tongue  died  out,  there  arose 
a  literary  compassion  in  England  which  took 
the  form  of  a  Celtic  movement.  A  school  of 
writers  arose  who  made  literary  capital  by 
belauding  or  belittling,  libelling  or  labelling 
the  Irish.  Thanks  to  an  audience  of  the 
middle  class  fleeing  from  English  Teutonisin 
and  Philistinism,  these  writers  won  a  cockney 
fame.  Only  Yeats  deserved  laurelled  rank, 
though  he  was  not  an  Irish  poet  at  all,  so 


IRELAND  AND  THE  IRISH      141 

much  as  a  Rossetti  lost  in  what  old  writers 
called  "a  Druidical  mist."  The  only  other 
figure  in  the  movement  was  Synge,  who,  in 
his  masterpiece,  grafted  a  glorified  dialect  of 
Anglo-Irish  to  an  absurd  plot.  His  "Playboy" 
infuriated  native  audiences  who  had  expected 
an  Irish  D'Artagnan  or  Quixote  from  him  at 
least.  The  Playboy  only  tried  "to  kill  his 
dad  with  a  loy,"  but  parricides  are  unknown 
in  Ireland,  though  I  remember  one  unfortunate 
enough  to  shoot  his  father  accidentally.  He 
was  always  called  "Bagdad,"  with  that  Irish 
felicity  for  nicknames  which  called  an  agent, 
who  was  being  perpetually  missed,  "Wood- 
cock!" 

There  are  fine  phrases  in  Synge.  Who  can 
forget — "a  young  gaffer  would  capsize  the 
stars,"  or  "coaching  through  Limbo!"  But 
they  were  not  Anglo-Irish,  so  much  as  pseudo- 
Shakespearian.  George  Russell  (A.  E.)  is  the 
real  Irish  poet.  Oddly  enough  the  last  of  the 
Bards  is  also  the  first  Irish  Communist. 

Ireland  is  a  land  where  a  few  leading  men 
in  politics  or  literature  are  ever  playing  to 
the  gallery  of  the  gods.  The  people  them- 
selves seem  only  happy  when  Heaven  and 
earth  are  listening  to  their  dissensions.  There 
are  fixed  sides  on  political,  religious,  and 


142      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

literary  questions  between  which  there  is  no 
place  for  canvass  or  conversion.  Celtic  gram- 
mar can  be  as  fierce  a  question  as  Home  Rule. 
Ireland  is  a  house  divided  against  itself.  If 
one  side  of  the  house  went  under,  the  other 
side  would  have  lost  its  sounding-board. 

I  shall  never  forget  or  regret  contesting 
Deny  City  as  a  Nationalist  in  1910.  Mr. 
Redmond  launched  me  with  a  classical  speech 
upon  the  maelstrom.  Nobody  cared  a  straw 
for  free  trade  or  taxes,  for  home  or  foreign 
policy.  I  lost  a  stand-up  religious  faction 
fight  by  small  majorities.  The  halt,  the  dying, 
and  the  dead  came  to  the  poll.  One  voter  died 
trying  to  vote  for  me  and  a  funeral-wreath  fig- 
ured in  my  election  expenses.  I  retired  later 
in  favour  of  my  chief  Protestant  supporter, 
David  Hogg,  and  the  seat  was  won  for  Home 
Rule.  Hogg  was  perhaps  the  last  of  the  ex- 
tinct race  of  Radical  Ulstermen  who  stood  the 
siege  of  Derry  and  won  the  battle  of  Bunker 
Hill — in  each  case  against  an  English  king. 

But  so  fierce  was  the  feeling  evolved  by  the 
Carson  campaign  that  Protestants  would  not 
receive  the  sacrament  where  Home  Rulers  of- 
ficiated. It  is  difficult  for  any  one  who  has  not 
been  behind  the  scenes  of  an  Ulster  election 
to  realise  the  Mohammedan  hatred  of  the 


IRELAND  AND  THE  IRISH      143 

Cross  among  Orangemen,  or  the  holy  horror 
among  Catholics  for  a  "black  Protestant." 
An  Irishman's  vote  is  decided  at  baptism  and 
remains  so  until  death  polls  all  "beneath  the 
Green."  I  believe  my  rival  was  brought  to 
canvass  the  vote  of  the  local  "holy  man." 
Somebody  inquired  the  nature  of  his  holiness. 
"Well,  he  just  sits  there  all  day  and  curses  the 
Pope!" 

No  power  less  than  German  bayonets  could 
bring  these  stubborn  peoples  together. 

The  division  in  Ireland  is  religious  and 
not  racial.  There  are  as  many  Celts  in  the 
Orange  ranks  as  there  are  of  old  Norman  and 
Cromwellian  blood  among  the  Catholic  Na- 
tionalists. An  O'Kane  used  to  lead  the  Orange- 
men, and  it  was  an  O'Flanagan  who  urged  the 
Protestants  "to  kick  the  Queen's  Crown  into 
the  Boyne"  rather  than  be  disestablished. 

The  secret  of  English  misrule  is  that  only 
Irishmen  can  understand  the  Irish.  George 
Wyndham  was  the  only  fit  ruler  England  ever 
sent  to  Ireland.  Descended  from  the  mar- 
tyred Lord  Edward  Fitzgerald,  catholic- 
minded,  a  soldier,  and  an  editor  of  poetry,  he 
seemed  one  born  to  solve  the  Irish  question. 
He  was  the  first  Irish  Secretary  to  visit  a  Na- 
tionalist member  in  his  home.  Unfortunately, 


144      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

for  his  generous  and  sanguine  nature  he  was 
assailed  by  the  lower  clamour  of  his  own  party 
and,  when  in  difficulties,  politely  abandoned 
by  Balfour.  I  met  him  on  his  civilising  tour 
amongst  Ulster  landlords.  I  can  recall  the 
tones  of  dreamy  persuasiveness  with  which  he 
urged  his  scheme  of  Devolution  or  disguised 
Home  Rule  to  them,  and  they  wondering  to 
what  devilment  he  was  up.  His  grief,  when 
betrayed  by  men  who  thought  indeed  he  was 
betraying  them,  was  terrible.  His  tears  were 
not  those  of  a  baffled  politician,  but  of  a  de- 
feated idealist.  When  he  fell  from  office  he 
wrote  a  beautiful  letter,  unprinted  as  yet,  in 
which  he  recognised  that  Ireland's  Messiahs 
must  be  stoned  like  those  of  any  other  country. 
His  was  not  the  first  nor  will  it  be  the  last 
heart  to  be  broken  for  love  of  Ireland. 

In  Ireland  as  in  chemistry  the  most  in- 
nocuous subjects  are  liable  to  become  ex- 
plosives when  mixed.  Religion  and  politics 
form  unfortunately  the  commonest  example  of 
such  combinations.  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  re- 
pelled the  Danish  invader  from  the  butter 
market,  but  unfortunately  mixed  bad  theol- 
ogy with  good  economics  hi  his  famous  book. 
There  was  a  clerical  explosion.  Believing  in 
conciliation  amongst  Irishmen,  I  once  brought 


IRELAND  AND  THE  IRISH      145 

Sir  Horace  to  the  only  spot  he  had  never  trod 
in  Ireland — the  Seminary  of  Maynooth.  Dr. 
Hogan,  his  severest  critic,  ran  out  to  welcome 
him,  and  the  entente  was  established,  which 
springs  up  between  all  Irishmen  of  good- will. 
Another  time  I  brought  Provost  Mahaffy  of 
Trinity  to  see  Cardinal  Logue.  I  believe  that 
if  he  had  not  had  to  catch  a  train,  they  would 
have  solved  the  Irish  problem  between  them ! 
The  trouble  in  Ireland  is  that  people  are  afraid 
of  meeting  for  fear  of  becoming  friends.  Dr. 
Mahaffy  was  the  omniscient  friend  of  my 
youth.  Though  he  could  teach  History,  Greek, 
German,  and  Music  at  will,  I  knew  him  best 
as  a  snipe-shooter.  With  his  old-fashioned 
gun  and  soft  clerical  hat  and  gaiters  he  used 
to  face  the  Monaghan  bogs — looking  not  un- 
like Mr.  Pickwick  in  his  attire,  but  a  Winkle 
I  should  add  in  sporting  assiduity.  The  snipe 
with  its  long  bill  is  the  sacred  bird  of  Irish 
sport — the  ibis  of  the  bogs.  There  are  different 
theories  as  to  its  shooting  as  of  its  cooking. 
Mahaffy  held  you  should  fire  whenever  you 
sighted  the  white  glint  of  its  breast.  I  once 
saw  him  kill  a  snipe  between  eighty  and 
ninety  yards  away — the  most  beautiful  shot 
I  ever  saw  fired.  He  was  over  threescore  at 
the  time  himself.  He  was  wonderful  com- 


146      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

pany  bog-trotting.  He  used  to  launch  theories 
on  all  subjects.  He  started  the  idea  that  is 
now  generally  held  by  Irish  anglers,  that 
coarse  fish  like  the  pike  came  into  Ireland 
with  the  Saxons  (whom  it  resembles  for  slug- 
gish gluttony)  and  are  still  slowly  dispos- 
sessing the  lively  brown  trout  who  is  a  native 
Irishman  of  the  lakes.  Certainly  there  is  no 
old  Gaelic  word  for  pike  as  there  is  for  trout 
and  salmon. 

Another  theory  he  broached  upon  the  bogs 
was  that  the  local  McKennas,  like  most  glens- 
men  and  "mountainy"  men  in  Ireland,  were 
a  remnant  of  the  Firbolgs  or  original  neo- 
lithic race  of  Ireland,  who  had  been  driven  by 
the  conquering  Gaels  into  the  mountain  dis- 
tricts. A  rounder  type  of  skull  and  dark  hair 
mark  the  elder  race,  which  is  sometimes  de- 
scribed as  Spanish.  It  was  wrongly  said  that 
when  Oscar  Wilde  wished  to  become  a  Catho- 
lic in  his  youth  at  Trinity,  Mahaffy  advised 
him  to  become  a  good  pagan  instead.  Ma- 
haffy's  advice  really  was:  "My  dear  Oscar, 
you  are  not  quite  clever  enough  to  be  one  of 
us  at  Trinity,  but  they  will  be  glad  enough  to 
have  you  at  Oxford."  So  Wilde  became  a  Fel- 
low of  Magdalen !  Mahaffy  has  made  many 
famous  replies,  which  may  one  day  be  chron- 


IRELAND  AND  THE  IRISH      147 

icled.  When  a  fanatic  inquired  if  "he  were 
saved,"  the  Doctor  of  Divinity  gravely  an- 
swered, yes.  "Why  do  you  not  proclaim  it 
on  the  housetops  ? "  went  on  the  other.  "Well, 
it  was  such  a  narrow  squeak,  I  like  to  say 
nothing  about  it!"  was  the  witty  answer. 

The  last  chapter  of  Irish  history  has  been 
strange.  I  watched  it  from  many  sides.  A 
Nationalist  candidate  myself,  two  of  my  re- 
lations were  returned  as  Unionists,  a  cousin 
entered  the  Home-Rule  cabinet,  and  an  uncle 
became  an  O'Brienite,  or  Independent  mem- 
ber in  Cork,  whose  beautiful  niece  as  a 
climax  married  the  Ulster  leader — Carson  him- 
self! 

It  always  struck  me  that  the  Puck  who  put 
the  "Ire"  in  Ireland  must  have  ranged  Red- 
mond and  Carson  on  wrong  sides.  Redmond 
struck  me  as  a  conservative  country  squire, 
fonder  of  pressing  the  trigger  of  his  shooting 
gun  than  of  thumping  tubs.  A  politician  who 
has  never  taken  a  bribe,  forgiving  to  his  polit- 
ical enemies,  a  tolerant  Catholic,  and  a  mild 
rebel,  he  would  have  made  a  better  member 
of  Grattan's  Parliament  than  a  modern  leader 
in  perilous  times. 

Carson  was  a  real  boss.  He  concentrated 
his  followers  and  exuded  his  own  movement. 


148      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

His  profession  was  the  law,  but  his  vocation 
was  its  defiance.  He  was  probably  the  last 
of  the  Irish  demagogues  born  to  trouble  Eng- 
lish politics  to  frenzy.  Only  Redmond's  in- 
fluence with  the  cabinet  kept  him  out  of  jail, 
whither  slow-witted  Saxons  were  anxious  to 
send  him.  His  cries  will  linger  on  the  breeze 
of  history  as  long  as  historians  suspect  his 
unconscious  part  in  firing  the  Great  War. 

Ireland  has  always  been  a  stormy  petrel. 
Her  ancient  name  was  Inisfail — the  Island  of 
Destiny.  Her  rebellions  have  twice  preluded 
the  fall  .of  English  sovereigns.  O'Connell's 
agitation  gave  a  lead  to  the  revolutions  of  1848 
over  Europe.  For  three  years  before  the  Great 
War,  Ireland  threatened  civil  convulsion.  She 
is  the  Banshee  of  the  world,  and  her  crying 
aloud  betokeneth  death ! 

Curiously  enough,  the  wife  of  an  English 
admiral  told  me  that  while  the  English  fleet 
were  visiting  Kiel  before  the  outbreak  of  war 
she  wagered  Tirpitz  a  sovereign  that  there 
would  be  civil  war  that  year  in  Ireland — and 
Tirpitz  only  smiled!  German  agents  were 
thick  in  Ireland  that  year.  They  made  a  ter- 
rible mistake  of  judgment.  Even  their  Eng- 
lish cousins  cannot  understand  Ireland.  Irish 
regiments  went  to  the  Transvaal  cheering 


IRELAND  AND  THE  IRISH      149 

Kruger.  They  licked  the  Boers  and  returned 
cheering — Kruger ! 

Carson's  men  were  in  grimmer  earnest  than 
Redmond's,  who  could  see  humour,  which 
was  unfortunately  closed  to  the  former  during 
those  fateful  months.  As  a  rule  in  Ireland  they 
say  everybody  can  see  a  joke  except  the  po- 
lice, the  Saxon,  and  the  dead.  Ulster  men  are 
a  hard-working,  hard-saving  race,  preferring 
to  indulge  in  prejudices  rather  than  pleasures, 
superstitious  even  in  their  dread  of  supersti- 
tion, but  peaceable  rather  than  military.  A 
feeling  of  surprised  dismay  swept  over  them 
when  the  War  proved  to  be  not  their  war  at 
all,  and  Ireland  was  proclaimed  in  spite  of 
their  gun-running  to  be  "the  one  bright  spot 
of  Empire."  Slowly  and  sadly  they  performed 
a  full  turn  toward  the  sea  and  faced  a  new 
enemy  under  their  imperturbable  leader.  Only 
a  few  were  unwilling  to  think  of  so  good  a  Prot- 
estant as  the  Kaiser  as  an  enemy,  but  the 
most  of  them  remembered  too  late  the  for- 
gotten text  that  they  who  take  the  sword 
shall  perish  by  the  same. 

We  had  long  known  for  certain  that  there 
would  be  no  United  Ireland  without  blood- 
shed. No  one  expected  that  it  would  be 
brought  about  shoulder  to  shoulder  in  another 


150      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

land.  Volunteers,  Catholic  and  Protestant,  lie 
in  French  graves.  They  were  apart  in  their 
lives  but  in  death  they  are  not  divided.  To 
Ireland  herself  the  Kaiser  brought  not  a  sword 
but  peace. 


AN  EMPIRE  OF  SPORT  AND  FREEDOM 

"WHAT  should  they  know  of  England  who  only 
England  know?"  is  a  phrase  of  Kipling  which 
would  have  puzzled  all  Victorian  premiers 
except  Disraeli.  To  Disraeli  England  and  the 
East  were  equally  congenial,  and  he  eventually 
merged  the  English  with  the  Indian  crown. 
Kipling's  burst  to  fame  came  with  the  rough 
times  of  the  Boer  War  when  prophets  were 
needed  to  say  smooth  things.  In  1888  a  friend 
of  mine  forwarded  some  of  Kipling's  work  to 
England  and  received  word  that  it  was  "not 
up  to  the  standard  of  the  Daily  Telegraph!" 

Whoever  knows  England  knows  the  Em- 
pire. Officially  it  is  not  an  accretion  but  an 
extension.  English  types  and  codes,  English 
sports  and  chaplains  have  been  reduplicated 
in  block,  wherever  official  tape  has  reddened 
the  map. 

The  principles  of  English  Whig  society 
were  no  abstract  beliefs  in  fraternity,  liberty, 
and  equality.  That  the  eldest  brother  should 
inherit  is  the  English  view  of  fraternity. 
That  an  Englishman's  house  is  his  castle 

151 


152      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

represents  his  ideal  of  liberty,  and  that  all 
sportsmen  are  equal  is  his  nearest  approach 
toward  equality.  Imperialists,  on  the  one 
hand,  cannot  forgive  Ministers  who  will  not 
govern  imperially,  and  "Little  Englanders," 
on  the  other,  excuse  the  Empire  in  that  it  is 
not  imperial.  Nationalism  flourishes  rather 
than  the  reverse  in  British  dominions.  And 
most  religions  except  that  of  the  state  are  suc- 
cessful. A  spirit  of  tolerance  inclines  officials 
to  snub  the  official  creed.  It  is  the  first  Em- 
pire to  practise  religious  tolerance — even  unto 
apathy,  as  earnest  believers  have  reason  to 
deplore.  Belgium  used  to  send  out  more 
missionaries  annually  than  England.  On  the 
Mediterranean  English  soldiers  salute  the 
Catholic  Host  at  Malta,  and  the  Holy  Carpet 
in  Egypt.  The  Koran  is  taught  in  the  college 
commemorating  Gordon — the  principal  Chris- 
tian martyr  of  England. 

Faith  and  morals  of  the  East  have  been 
severely  left  alone  since  the  Indian  mutiny. 
Even  the  horrors  of  Chinese  life  in  the  Trans- 
vaal mines  were  glossed  by  Archbishop  David- 
son as  "a  regrettable  necessity."  Thomas  a 
Becket's  brimstone  is  no  longer  stocked  at 
Canterbury.  The  English  official  is  the  worst 
missionary  possible.  He  believes  his  religious 


SPORT  AND  FREEDOM          153 

and  social  customs  are  the  best,  but  he  is  in- 
different whether  inferior  races  envy  or  imi- 
tate. His  offer  to  India  is:  "We  will  manage 
your  government  and  finance  without  bribery 
or  injustice.  We  will  spear  your  pigs  and 
shoot  your  tigers  for  reward.  Worship  your 
own  gods,  and  we  will  sell  you  their  images  by 
the  gross.  If  our  bishops  bore  you,  they  bore 
us  much  more.  If  you  really  wish  to  be  Chris- 
tians, select  your  own  brand." 

The  English  realise  that  it  is  a  vain  dream 
for  those  who  believe  in  "original  sin"  to  try 
to  convert  races  who  repeat  from  childhood 
the  words:  "Man  is  originally  good."  I 
once  asked  a  Brahmin  how  English  clergy 
affected  him.  He  answered:  "The  Bishop 
of  Madras  used  to  have  a  wife,  who  ruled 
him  and  his  chaplains.  We  laughed  when  he 
said  he  would  show  us  the  way  to  heaven. 
We  do  not  think  women  can  show  the  way 
to  heaven." 

The  Indian  Empire  began  with  a  dividend- 
bearing  company  and  ended  in  the  famous 
phrase,  "The  white  man's  burden,"  which 
represents  a  hazy  notion  of  an  Aryan  mission 
to  the  East.  The  English  have  not  under- 
stood Indian  thought  or  mysticism.  Even 
Sir  Edwin  Arnold's  Light  of  Asia  was  a 


154      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

parody  of  Buddha.  Kipling  etched  Indian 
philosophy  in  Kim,  and  Laurence  Hope  ech- 
oed their  passion  in  The  Garden  of  Karma. 
Incidentally  Laurence  Hope  was  the  only  white 
woman  to  commit  suttee  on  her  husband's 
grave. 

India's  real  contribution  to  English  life  is 
polo,  which  has  since  proved  a  true  tie  be- 
tween the  sea-divided  Saxons.  It  is  curious 
that  East  and  West  can  only  meet  in  games 
— in  Persian  chess  or  Indian  polo.  Sport  is 
the  key  to  English  rule  and  character.  Fair 
play  is  the  pith  and  fibre  of  the  Empire.  It  is 
sport  which  makes  the  English  generally  prefer 
referees  to  codes,  adventure  to  efficiency,  and 
the  honour  of  contest  to  the  lust  for  reward. 
English  justice  gives  a  sporting  chance  to 
every  native  in  India.  The  9th  Lancers  were 
degraded  by  Curzon,  to  his  great  credit,  for 
not  confessing  the  murder  of  a  black  cook. 
Uhlans  under  such  circumstance  might  have 
been  promoted. 

The  government  is  not  directly  responsible 
for  famines.  For  disaffection  it  is.  Govern- 
ment stupidity  sends  Indians  to  English  uni- 
versities to  forget  their  inferiority  at  the  price 
of  that  in  which  they  are  superior.  The  symp- 
toms of  discontent  are  sometimes  inscrutable. 


SPORT  AND  FREEDOM          155 

Critics,  for  instance,  point  out  that  statues  of 
Queen  Victoria  in  India  have  to  be  guarded 
by  sentries  day  and  night,  like  those  of  Cath- 
erine the  Great  in  Poland.  Yet  different 
reasons  underlie  the  necessity.  Catherine's 
policy  of  conquest  was  hateful  to  Poles.  It 
is  the  public  statue  of  the  womanly  form  that 
shocks  Orientals.  The  presence  of  Queen 
Mary  stripped  King  George's  durbar  of  the 
reverence,  though  not  of  the  loyalty,  that 
should  hedge  one  who  occupies  the  throne 
of  the  great  Mogul. 

Under  English  rule  no  Indian  has  suffered 
for  his  religion.  The  mutiny  was  due  to  pig's 
fat  on  cartridges  and  pig-headedness  in  high 
places.  It  was  suppressed  by  a  Viceroy  who 
was  dubbed  "Clemency"  for  his  pains  or 
rather  for  the  lack  of  pains  he  inflicted  on  the 
natives.  In  John  Nicholson  the  mutiny  pro- 
duced the  only  European  to  receive  religious 
worship  in  the  East  since  Vasco  da  Gama  and 
St.  Francis  Xavier. 

A  traveller  was  once  surprised  to  see  a  Judge, 
a  Counsel  for  the  Defense,  and  the  Clerk  of 
the  Court  arrive  in  a  distant  part  of  India  to 
try  a  Pariah  for  his  life!  In  the  same  spirit 
the  English  sent  a  special  train  during  the 
Boer  War  to  bring  a  dying  Irish  private  the 


156      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Last  Sacraments.  Whosoever  aspires  to  the 
next  world-empery  should  make  memento  of 
such. 

Indians  may  enter  the  Council  of  State 
but  not  the  Bombay  Yacht  Club.  English 
clubs  and  the  Memorial  to  the  Cawnpore 
Massacre  are  forbidden  ground.  European 
minorities  in  the  East  can  afford  to  grant 
liberty  but  not  equality.  Kings  can  only 
rule  where  "they  can  do  no  wrong,"  and  whites 
must  employ  similar  illusions  in  guiding  the 
black.  Modern  unrest  in  India  dates  from  the 
proposal  of  the  Catholic  Viceroy  Ripon,  him- 
self the  member  of  a  recently  penalised  sect, 
to  subject  white  offenders  to  black  magis- 
trates. A  typical  compromise  was  made  which 
insisted  on  an  Englishman's  right  to  a  "pie- 
bald jury"  half  composed  of  whites.  Under 
Curzon  the  unrest  developed  into  a  kind  of 
babu-anarchism.  Curzon  represented  Balliol 
on  the  throne,  the  philosopher-king  who  re- 
formed India,  until  its  calm  was  broken  by 
bombs — a  cold,  scintillating  ruler  not  un- 
worthy to  succeed  Warren  Hastings,  on  whose 
virtue  or  iniquity  historians  cannot  agree. 
He  explained  the  use  of  commas  to  his  officials 
and  introduced  the  Dalai-Lama  to  armed 
civilisation.  It  was  no  anomaly  on  his  part 


SPORT  AND  FREEDOM          157 

to  give  a  gorgeous  durbar  in  time  of  famine. 
Roman  Emperors  sated  the  crowds  with 
"games  and  bread,"  panem  et  cirsenses.  If 
bread  was  lacking  in  India,  Curzon  at  least 
provided  a  circus. 

English  and  Indian  remain  inscrutable  to 
each  other,  especially  the  English.  He  has 
never  wearied  inveighing  against  native  caste 
— yet  at  Curzon's  durbar  Indian  rajahs  were 
much  entertained  by  the  refusal  of  visiting 
English  duchesses  to  courtsey  to  the  beau- 
tiful American  vice-reine.  Pierre  Loti  wrote  a 
poetical  book  in  favour  of  an  India  without 
the  English,  as  one  might  praise  a  mediaeval 
palace  without  its  modern  conveniences.  This 
sensible  Indians  realise;  only  idealists  pro- 
test. 

An  appreciation  of  sportsmanship  is  the 
test  for  autonomy  through  the  Empire.  Aus- 
tralia had  to  defeat  England  at  cricket  before 
she  was  given  a  commonwealth.  The  entente 
with  France  was  immensely  helped  in  pop- 
ular estimation  by  France's  football  victory 
over  Scotland.  Australia's  success  caused  a 
sentimental  mourning  for  "the  Ashes  of  Eng- 
lish Cricket,"  and  a  form  of  crusade  was  des- 
patched to  bring  them  back  from  the  antip- 
odes. Losing  the  Yacht  Cup  to  America  was 


158      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

felt  almost  as  much  as  the  original  loss  of  the 
colonies. 

Sport  remains  the  great  unofficial  depart- 
ment which  permeates  the  Empire  and  costs 
the  nation  half  as  much  again  as  the  navy. 
Whoever  can  define  "sport"  can  define  the 
English.  Sport  is  a  practice  originating  prob- 
ably in  the  ceaseless  war  Anglo-Saxons  had 
to  wage  against  forest  animals.  The  north- 
erners had  to  be  mighty  hunters  to  live.  The 
English  branch  of  the  Teutonic  family  carried 
the  sea-faring  and  animal-slaying  propensi- 
ties of  the  race  to  their  highest  pitch.  Modern 
sport,  thanks  to  a  Celtic  blend,  keeps  the 
mean  between  the  torture  of  animals  and 
humanitarianism.  Dick  Martin,  of  Galway, 
established  animal  protection  by  law.  The 
unwritten  law  of  sport  was  gradually  estab- 
lished that  the  pursued  must  be  allowed  a 
chance  to  escape.  That  big  game  have  to  be 
killed  in  the  swamp  instead  of  the  arena  still 
differentiates  the  northern  from  the  Latin  idea 
of  sport.  The  true  sportsman  prefers  to  miss 
a  difficult  quarry  rather  than  to  slay  an  easy 
one.  This  is  a  sentiment  unknown  to  the 
Latin  and  mysterious  to  the  Oriental.  A 
Jewish  squire  was  sadly  perplexed  when  his 
guests  put  down  their  guns  rather  than  fire 


SPORT  AND  FREEDOM          159 

among  birds  that  flew  too  tamely.  A  sports- 
man is  one  who  takes  his  chance  when  he 
ought  and  not  when  he  can.  He  shall  not  aim 
at  the  sitting  bird  nor  strike  the  fallen  boxer 
nor  "quench  the  smoking  flax."  True  sports- 
manship sweetens  the  competition  of  life,  is 
long-suffering  in  action,  and  is  not  puffed  up 
in  reminiscence. 

Yet  sport  until  Victorian  days  could  be 
cruel  for  cruelty's  sake.  English  bull-fighting, 
in  which  the  animal's  horns  were  sawn,  his 
tail  and  ears  cropped,  and  his  nostrils  plugged 
with  pepper  was  far  more  cruel  than  the 
Spanish  ceremony.  Bull-baiting  was  abolished 
in  1835  only.  As  late  as  the  forties  my  grand- 
father saw  a  badger  drawn  from  a  tub  by  a 
woman  with  her  bare  shoulders ! 

Sport  has  gradually  attained  its  refinements 
and  position  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  world.  A 
man  without  the  sporting  sense  is  as  much 
out  of  place  as  an  American  without  mone- 
tary instincts  or  a  Latin  without  gallantry. 
"These  people  must  be  lunatics  or  devils," 
observed  the  Thibetans  when  the  first  English 
expedition  broke  into  a  gymkhana.  Even 
Belgian  gendarmes  gasped  on  seeing  foot- 
balls bob  behind  the  trenches  in  Flanders. 
Wellington  took  foxhounds  to  the  Peninsular 


160      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

War.  It  is  curious  how  the  English  mind  re- 
duces even  militarism  to  terms  of  sport.  In 
the  Boer  War  ambulance  wagons  came  to  be 
called  "game-carts."  Replacing  a  general 
was  "changing  the  bowling."  Firing  on  the 
Red  Cross  was  contemptuously  summed  up 
as  "not  playing  cricket."  Sport  lends  a  greater 
prestige  to  men  than  politics.  In  winning  the 
Derby  during  his  premiership  Lord  Rosebery 
experienced  a  moral  grandeur  that  prevented 
him  taking  a  serious  part  in  politics  again. 

The  sporting  sense  lies  at  the  root  of  the 
national  love  of  compromise.  It  has  pro- 
duced a  class  of  referees.  Even  the  Speaker 
of  the  House  is  a  glorified  umpire  who  inter- 
prets the  rules  of  parliamentary  fair  play.  It 
is  this  sense  more  than  language  which  divides 
German  and  English.  German  thoroughness 
can  but  detest  compromises  which  arise  from 
the  spirit  of  freedom  and  fair  play.  Germany 
progresses  by  hard-and-fixed  rules — but  Eng- 
land by  exceptions  to  rules.  German  children 
commit  suicide  to  avoid  examinations  which 
in  England  are  a  national  joke.  The  German 
working  man  is  forced  to  live  comfortably. 
In  England  he  is  free  to  be  miserable. 

Fair  play  introduced  into  war  is  a  stumbling- 
block  to  German  militarists  just  as  cheering 


SPORT  AND  FREEDOM          161 

an  adversary  is  considered  a  confession  of 
weakness.  Yet  Botha  was  cheered  at  Ed- 
ward's coronation  as  Marshal  Soult  was  at 
Victoria's.  The  English  went  out  to  war  with 
Germany  with  a  genuine  wish  to  see  fair  play. 
It  was  a  spirit  which  endured  while  the  Em- 
den  was  afloat,  but  sank  irretrievably  with 
the  Lusitania. 

The  result  of  national  characteristics  has 
given  England  a  sporting  rather  than  a  mili- 
tarist caste.  In  Germany,  an  officer's  uniform 
is  his  fortune.  In  England  it  required  a  small 
fortune,  before  the  war,  to  wear  one.  Only  in 
India  or  Egypt  is  there  a  tendency  to  militar- 
ism. Imperialism,  which  is  the  base  of  all  mili- 
tarism, past  or  present,  is  of  a  recent  growth 
in  England.  Its  rise  may  be  popularly  traced 
in  those  "deathless"  ditties  which  affect  men's 
minds  more  than  laws.  From  anti-Russian 
days  the  English  crowd  hummed: 

"We  don't  want  to  fight, 
But  by  Jingo,  if  we  do !" 

The  rank  and  file  of  imperialism  took  their 
name  from  the  verse.  The  Jubilee  period  pro- 
duced an  infectious  chorus  not  unlike  a  hys- 
terical peacock's  Te  Deum,  "Tarara-boom- 
de-ay!" 


162      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

The  dubious  days  of  the  Boer  War  in  which 
the  Empire  struck  bottom  temporarily  led  to 
the  haunting  refrain:  "What  ho,  she  bumps!" 
It  was  a  pity  when  the  day  of  battle  came  that 
the  music-hall  should  have  taken  the  place  of 
a  national  Tyrtaeus.  Perhaps  nothing  could 
better  show  the  careless  phlegm  of  the  Eng- 
lish soldier  than  the  laughing  snatches  and 
phrases  with  which  he  charges.  When  the 
French  chant  their  Marseillaise,  Mr.  Atkins 
has  been  heard  to  observe  as  he  goes  into  ac- 
tion for  all  eternity  perhaps:  "Front  seats 
sixpence ! " 

As  long  as  Gladstone  obsessed  pubh'c  life 
by  his  personality,  imperialism  was  not  en- 
couraged as  a  creed.  Chamberlain  was  the 
first  to  conceive  the  notion  of  putting  the  Em- 
pire into  a  fiscal  strait-waistcoat.  He  marked 
the  advent  of  the  business  man  into  politics. 
He  did  not  hesitate  to  conquer  the  Boers  with 
shells  made  in  Germany  and  cavalry  from 
the  antipodes.  The  Boer  War  should  have 
acted  as  a  signal  and  a  warning.  General 
after  general  buried  his  reputation  behind 
the  kopjes.  Buller  was  disgraced,  Methuen 
captured,  and  Kitchener  reprimanded.  The 
despatches  made  woful  reading.  Roberts  once 
reported  that  all  would  have  been  well 


SPORT  AND  FREEDOM          163 

with  one  regiment  if  there  had  been  no  panic ! 
And  Buller  confided  that  he  had  made  the 
enemy  respect  his  rear !  It  was  no  consolation 
to  hear  that  the  Boer  numbers  had  been  killed 
several  times  over.  The  public  craving  for 
comfort  centred  on  Baden-Powell's  defence 
of  Mafeking.  It  was  afterward  confessed  that 
the  defender  had  exhibited  "unconventional 
gaiety"  more  than  any  military  quality,  and 
even  committed  lese-majesty  by  issuing  his 
own  head  on  postage-stamps.  In  the  modern 
sense  there  was  not  a  siege  at  all.  Neverthe- 
less, Mafeking  was  the  high-water  mark  of 
imperialism.  Its  relief  threw  London  into 
hysteria  and  added  "maffick"  to  the  Standard 
Dictionary.  At  Eton  I  remember  a  vivid  in- 
cident typical  of  that  microcosm  of  Empire. 
Among  the  decorations  of  bunting  a  Boer 
flag  was  hung  from  the  window  of  a  boy  sus- 
pected of  being  a  pro-Boer.  The  boys  gath- 
ered and  stormed  the  house,  the  inhabitants  of 
which  showered  their  books  and  stores  into 
the  street.  The  air  was  rent  with  groceries 
and  bathtubs.  It  was  a  mad  half-hour,  and 
the  house  was  more  damaged  than  most  of 
the  buildings  in  Mafeking.  In  the  evening  the 
whole  school  marched  up  to  Windsor  with 
torches  to  serenade  the  old  Queen.  Leaving 


164      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

the  Windsor  mob  to  bellow  outside  the  gates, 
we  entered  and  sang  under  the  royal  windows. 
The  curtains  were  drawn  aside  by  the  Hindu 
attendants,  and  we  beheld  the  Queen  with 
the  cadaverous  Bishop  of  London  (Creighton) 
standing  in  the  background.  The  hand  of 
death  was  over  both  of  them,  and,  indeed, 
they  died  within  a  few  days  of  each  other  in 
the  following  January.  For  a  few  moments 
the  sad,  stolid  face  of  Victoria  looked  out 
upon  the  children  and  the  grandchildren  of  the 
Victorians.  It  was  pathetic  that  she  for  whom 
Gordon  had  died  and  the  Light  Brigade 
charged  should  make  her  farewell  bow  to  us 
from  the  box  on  an  evening  of  opera  bouffe ! 

The  Boer  War  outlasted  Queen  Victoria, 
with  its  endless  failures  and  delays.  Warning, 
unfortunately,  it  did  not  bring.  It  even  gen- 
erated a  fatal  idea  among  Englishmen.  It  is 
said  that  the  devil,  failing  to  tempt  the  Irish 
to  believe  there  was  no  Heaven  or  Hell,  whis- 
pered to  them,  "There  is  no  hurry" — and  they 
believed  him.  Some  genius  for  evil  persuaded 
the  English  that  they  could  always  "muddle 
through."  The  result  was  that  all  ideas  of 
efficiency  and  preparedness  resulting  from  the 
South  African  travail  were  still-born.  Dis- 
asters were  forgotten  not  digested.  The  of- 


SPORT  AND  FREEDOM          165 

ficial  history  of  the  Boer  War,  completed  by 
Colonel  Robertson,  I  believe  on  his  death- 
bed, has  never  been  published  by  the  War 
Office.  It  is  a  document  essential  to  the  his- 
tory of  the  Empire,  but  to  this  day  the  English 
public  are  in  ignorance. 

The  Boer  War  itself  was  forgotten  in  the 
elections  of  1906.  The  Liberals  returned  to 
power  on  the  tide  of  reaction,  bringing  with 
them  all  the  half-hatched  feuds  and  schemes 
which  made  the  country  a  political  cockpit 
until  the  outbreak  of  the  Great  War  eight 
years  later. 

The  English  were  more  encouraged  than 
dismayed  by  their  adventures  on  that  con- 
tinent, which  had  swallowed  empires  and 
churches.  The  travels  of  Livingstone,  his  dis- 
covery by  Stanley  with  the  immortal  "Dr.  Liv- 
ingstone, I  presume,"  uttered  at  their  meet- 
ing, the  finding  of  Victoria  Nyanza,  Rhodesia, 
the  Cape  to  Cairo  Railway,  the  purchase  of 
the  Suez  Canal,  and  the  damming  of  the  Nile 
led  the  English  to  believe  in  their  vocation 
as  a  charmed  if  not  a  chosen  people  in  Africa. 
They  absorbed  the  Boers,  they  shooed  the 
French  from  Fashoda,  and  they  blocked  the 
Germans  in  Morocco. 

The  Egyptian  chapter  was  amazing.     The 


166      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

early  Victorians  used  to  be  interested  in  the 
Sphinx  because  of  its  resemblance  to  Tom 
Cribb's  countenance  after  a  prize-fight.  The 
next  generation  conceived  a  mission  to  the 
Egyptians.  They  entered  into  a  dual  control 
with  the  French  to  rule  that  part  of  the  Sul- 
tan's dominions  for  the  good  of  its  inhabi- 
tants. The  bombarding  of  Alexandria  and 
single  control  followed.  The  patriot  Arabi 
was  defeated,  and  only  escaped  death  owing  to 
four  thousand  pounds'  worth  of  legal  assistance 
from  Wilfred  Blunt.  Arabi  was  spared,  but 
Gordon  was  sacrificed.  Whether  Gladstone's 
soul  must  sit  and  twitter  for  ever  on  the  tele- 
graph-wires to  Khartoum  or  not,  Gordon's 
soul  marches  in  the  great  army  of  idealists, 
whom  the  world  has  not  known  how  to  use. 
Only  England  could  have  given  Egypt  a  Gor- 
don and  a  Cromer.  Since  Joseph,  no  for- 
eigner has  done  more  for  Egypt  materially 
than  Cromer.  As  an  instance  of  the  eternal 
gulf  between  idealists  and  practical  men 
Cromer's  record  of  Gordon  is  curious.  He 
recognised  his  "lively  though  sometimes  ill- 
directed  repugnance  to  injustice,  oppression, 
and  meanness  of  every  description  and  con- 
siderable power  of  acquiring  influence  on 
those,  necessarily  limited  in  numbers,  with 
whom  he  was  brought  into  personal  contact." 


SPORT  AND  FREEDOM          167 

But — "as  a  matter  of  personal  morality"  he 
did  not  think  "his  process  of  reasoning  de- 
fensible." Words  that  might  have  appeared 
in  Pilate's  Judean  memoirs  of  Another  Great 
Idealist.  Pilate  was  the  prototype  of  all  Eng- 
lish officials — with  his  condescending  yet  con- 
temptuous manner  to  natives,  his  tolerant 
scorn  of  their  beliefs,  and  his  occasional  fee- 
ble generosity  toward  patriots  or  prophets. 
Pilate  had  good  points  and  was  canonised  by 
the  Abyssinian  Church.  Cromer,  like  any 
English  official,  could  not  have  understood 
why  Gordon  should  prefer  a  lonely  death  to 
"hailing  the  tram  of  the  world"  (Gordon's 
phrase),  or  why  an  Egyptian  Moslem  should 
prefer  death  for  his  prophet  to  prosperity  un- 
der Christian  rule. 

To  compare  Egypt  in  the  eighties  with 
Palestine  under  •  the  Romans  would  afford  a 
parallel.  The  British  and  Roman  Empires 
have  been  more  alike  than  any  other.  If  the 
old  khedive  out-Heroded  Herod,  and  Cromer 
displayed  the  governing  qualities  of  a  Pilate, 
the  Mahdi  and  Gordon  between  them  supplied 
some  historical  inkling  to  the  position  and 
political  effect  of  Christ — plunged  as  He  found 
Himself  in  another  perilous  meeting-ground 
between  East  and  West. 

Monsignor  Sibarra,  the  Pope's  representa- 


168      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

tive  in  the  Soudan,  held  Gordon  to  be  a  saint 
and  kept  his  cigar-case  as  a  relic.  He  had 
seen  Gordon  pray  in  ecstasy  like  a  mediaeval 
contemplative,  and  he  was  an  official  judge  of 
such  matters.  He  wished  to  go  with  him  to 
Khartoum  but  Gordon  bade  him  wait  and 
pray. 

If  the  British  Empire  has  shown  religious 
tolerance,  she  has  lacked  the  higher  gift  of 
imagination.  Her  motto,  "Imperium  et  Liber- 
tas"  is  really  a  contradiction  in  terms.  A 
sporting  pity  for  inferiors  like  the  fellaheen, 
together  with  a  decided  respect  for  fighting 
equals  like  the  Boers,  has  made  modern  im- 
perialism the  glittering  excuse  for  a  wider 
liberty  than  is  consistent  with  armed  rule  over 
conquered  races. 

Not  that  it  has  repressed  a  native  and  na- 
tionalist view.  It  is  from  England  herself 
that  the  strongest  criticisms  of  the  invasions 
of  Egypt,  Afghanistan,  the  Boer  Republics, 
and  Thibet  have  come.  Defenceless  invasions 
of  the  defenceless  they  appeared  to  many 
honest  Englishmen  who  said  so. 

Whoever  writes  the  lining  of  English  his- 
tory must  consult  the  little-known  mono- 
graphs of  Wilfred  Blunt  criticising  English 
rule  in  Ireland,  Egypt,  and  India.  His  par- 


SPORT  AND  FREEDOM         169 

tisanship  may  be  as  sharp  as  salt,  but  his 
view  makes  a  necessary  condiment  to  an  im- 
partial history. 

Yet  Wilfred  Blunt  is  one  of  the  most  Eng- 
lish of  Englishmen  I  know,  with  his  stubborn 
individualism  and  his  chivalrous  sense  of 
fair  play.  A  poet  himself  and  a  breeder  of 
Arabian  horses,  a  Catholic  with  Mohammedan 
sympathies,  a  Sussex  landlord,  and  an  Ori- 
ental politician — he  is  not  far  removed  from 
the  Byronic  tradition  which  has  made  English 
gentlemen  the  symbol  of  madness  and  gen- 
erosity abroad. 

Wilfred  Blunt  did  not  hesitate  to  adopt 
the  cause  of  Ireland,  and  was  thrown  into 
Galway  Gaol  by  his  own  cousin  Mr.  Balfour, 
then  Irish  Secretary.  It  is  difficult  to  be 
serious  in  Ireland  without  becoming  ridiculous, 
for  some  unexplained  but  historical  reason. 
Blunt  used  to  distribute  his  photograph  in 
convict  kit  to  his  friends.  King  Edward  see- 
ing one  of  these,  was  puzzled  by  the  uniform. 
"It  is  your  Majesty's,"  he  was  informed. 

Perhaps  Wilfred  Blunt  is  a  better  symbol 
of  English  character  than  the  procurators  and 
viceroys  whom  his  books  assail.  I  have  never 
seen  him  obstruct  the  motors  of  financiers 
with  his  beautiful  horses  in  Sussex  lanes  with- 


170      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

out  realising  the  English  love  of  individual 
freedom,  and  distaste  of  the  machine.  In  spite 
of  herself  has  England  become  imperialistic. 
Her  better  self  has  condemned  and  striven  to 
rectify  her  treatment  of  the  Irish  and  the 
Boers.  It  is  possible  that  such  races  of  man- 
kind as  have  settled  down  under  British  rule 
during  the  nineteenth  century  have  enjoyed 
the  same  admixture  of  peace  and  toleration 
with  which  the  Flavian  and  Antonine  em- 
perors made  happy  the  world — at  least  as 
happy  as  historical  conditions  ever  seem  likely 
to  permit. 


SOCIETY  IN  DECAY 

WITHIN  memory  of  many  people  living,  Eng- 
lish society  was  a  feudal  club  without  right  of 
entry  from  outside.  The  Whigs  of  pedigree 
stood  at  the  head  of  a  great  patrician  stud. 
Though  eugenics  as  a  science  were  unknown, 
the  social  value  of  good  breeding  was  even 
overappreciated.  Blood,  whatever  its  merits, 
led  to  position  and  success.  The  advantages 
and  the  defects  of  aristocratic  inbreeding  are 
always  noticeable.  Peerage,  baronetage,  and 
gentry  formed  limited  circles.  Betwixt  the 
squirarchy  and  the  plebs  there  was  a  gulf 
fixed.  The  remnants  of  the  old  Catholic 
peerage  were  the  most  exclusive  of  all.  Their 
blood  was  changed  during  Victoria's  reign  by 
the  Oxford  converts  in  the  same  way  that  the 
American  brides  later  freshened  the  veins  of 
the  peerage  as  a  whole. 

For  good  or  for  bad  the  old  society  decayed, 
and  was  succeeded  by  another  whose  decay 
may  also  be  questioned.  A  caste  of  some 
five  hundred  privileged  trustees  has  extended 
into  a  mob  of  ten  thousand,  few  of  whom  are 
native  gentry,  and  the  most  prominent  seldom 

171 


172      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Europeans.  On  the  one  hand,  American  women 
charmed  their  way  into  the  charmed  circle, 
while,  on  the  other,  Jews  and  mercantile  princes 
entered  by  all  manner  of  hooks  and  crooks. 
The  Jew  has  a  better  position  in  England  than 
America,  where  he  is  socially  boycotted  by  a 
society  which  is  as  rich  or  richer.  English 
society  is  poorer  both  in  possessions  and  pride. 
From  being  so  unknown  hi  society  that  Dis- 
raeli was  only  admitted  as  a  drawing-room 
freak,  the  Jew  has  come  to  permeate  London 
society.  He  entered  under  the  gonfalon  of 
the  Rothschilds.  Bringing  the  first  news  of 
Waterloo  made  the  Rothschilds  great  among 
a  nation  of  stock-brokers.  During  the  nine- 
teenth century  the  Jews  have  taken  a  part  in 
every  department  of  life.  No  profession  and 
no  party  can  claim  them.  Their  Joshuas  and 
Calebs  have  carried  away  no  ignoble  fruits 
from  the  land.  Within  half  a  century  a 
Disraeli  became  Premier,  a  Hershel  Lord 
Chancellor,  a  Jessel  Master  of  the  Rolls,  a 
Montefiore  Lord  Mayor,  an  Isaacs  Chief  Jus- 
tice, a  Solomon  Royal  Academician,  and  a 
Nathan  Colonial  Governor.  Jewish  names 
were  even  found  at  times  among  the  state 
bishops.  The  English  archbishoprics  remain, 
however,  a  Scotch  monopoly. 


SOCIETY  IN  DECAY  173 

Individual  Jews  have  by  their  services  been 
of  national  benefit.  But  the  society-seeking 
swarm  has  had  doubtful  results.  Their  in- 
discriminate entry  has  changed  such  standards 
as  made  social  privileges  worth  while.  It  was 
a  curious  fact  that  Edward  VII  as  Prince  and 
King  was  the  most  responsible  for  pressing 
them  into  the  front  seats. 

Anti-Semitic  feeling  is  as  degrading  and  out 
of  date  as  the  pillory,  but  social  discrimina- 
tion can  be  an  ethical  necessity.  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  press  the  social  charge  home — for,  on 
the  one  hand,  the  Jews  show  a  higher  religious 
and  moral  life  than  English  society.  But 
nationally  they  are  out  of  place,  as  is  shown 
by  their  total  lack  of  the  sporting  sense,  ex- 
cept in  the  occasional  guise  of  magnificent 
patrons.  The  silly  Gentile  has  not  understood 
so  well  in  England  as  in  America  that  the  cho- 
sen people  are  wiser  than  the  children  of  the 
world,  and  that  the  meek  do  inherit  the  earth. 
Nevertheless,  Jewish  versatility  demands  ad- 
miration in  modern  England.  They  win  vic- 
tories on  the  turf  and  conduct  debate  in  the 
House  of  Commons  as  successfully  as  they 
run  newspapers  and  banks.  Parliament  is 
their  wash-pot,  arid  over  the  Empire  they  have 
cast  their  shoe. 


174      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

The  only  professions  in  which  they  have  not 
risen  are  those  of  arms  and  diplomacy.  They 
have  not  entered  the  Army,  owing  not  so  much 
to  lack  of  courage  as  to  the  smallness  of  the 
remuneration,  which  might  well  challenge  the 
divine  injunction  to  soldiers  to  be  satisfied 
with  their  pay.  Sir  William  Butler  used  to 
say  that  Gordon  was  the  only  soldier  he  knew 
who  was. 

From  English  diplomacy  Jews  are  excluded 
because  cleverness  is  not  its  first  qualification. 
Nor  have  Jews  taken  to  the  Navy.  The  Phre- 
nicians  performed  sea-service  for  them  in  old 
days  and  the  ships  of  England  secure  the 
carriage  of  their  commerce  to-day. 

The  decay  or  soundness  of  society  influences 
every  profession  except  the  Navy.  There  may 
be  "political"  generals,  but  the  admiral  in 
politics  is  rare.  It  required  so  bluff  and  breezy 
a  type  as  Lord  Charles  Beresford  to  carry  off 
the  role.  Isaac  Butt,  Parnell's  predecessor, 
once  suggested  that  Beresford  should  lead  the 
Irish  party.  He  has,  however,  represented  the 
Navy  in  the  House.  Nobody  can  be  too 
thankful  for  his  text  that  "Battleships  are 
cheaper  than  battles."  His  criticism  has  been 
sound  when  naval  and  not  political,  but  as 
an  Irish  admiral  in  English  politics,  he  has 


SOCIETY  IN  DECAY  175 

sometimes  found  himself  sitting  between  some- 
what unmusical  chairs. 

The  distinction  of  the  English  Navy  as  well 
as  its  safeguard  is  in  being  outside  society. 
The  Navy  is  always  absent  on  its  mission 
upon  the  sea.  Naval  officers  are  devoted  to 
their  service  like  Levites  from  their  youth 
up.  Yeoman  and  seafaring  blood  predom- 
inates among  them.  No  alien  may  serve  in 
the  ships.  The  Army  included  men  of  sport 
and  society,  as  well  as  the  professional  strate- 
gist. But  the  naval  officer  finds  his  profession 
paramount  and  absorbing.  It  is  for  him  to 
leave  parents  and  family  and  to  serve  unre- 
mittingly upon  the  altars  of  the  deep.  Hard 
toil  and  scant  pay  through  long  years  are  his, 
that  others  may  be  safe  in  gathering  the 
riches  of  the  world. 

The  Navy  is  the  force  which  never  ceases 
to  be  in  action.  Their  warfare  against  other 
navies  has  proven  a  direct  continuation  of 
their  previous  life.  To  mobilise  they  do  not 
have  to  leave  their  homes.  The  sailors  have 
always  been  in  the  trenches,  and  their  trenches 
are  the  seven  seas.  Their  traditions  have 
been  untouched  by  the  lowering  of  ideals 
which  has  invaded  every  other  class  and  pro- 
fession. The  saviour  of  society  owes  its 


176      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

strength  to  the  fact  that  it  remains  apart  and 
uncontaminated  by  society  itself. 

Parenthetically,  it  may  be  noticed  that  the 
navy  as  a  service  retains  much  of  the  old 
religious  sense.  Admiral  Beresford  notes  truly 
that  the  men  swear  but  do  not  blaspheme. 
In  Germany  the  navy  is  the  secondary  service, 
and  the  calibre  of  the  middle-class  atheists 
who  pace  her  decks  cannot  compare  with  the 
Christian  gentlemen  under  the  white  ensign. 
The  English  fleet  has  been  aptly  compared 
to  the  Roman  legions  cut  off  from  a  decadent 
capital,  to  guard  the  world  from  the  barbarians. 
Whether  English  society  was  suffering  from 
decay  or  development,  symptoms  made  their 
appearance  not  far  different  from  those  which 
historians  tell  of  the  last  phase  of  Roman 
history.  The  Colosseum  once  contained  the 
same  crowds  of  pallid  unfit  that  watched 
the  muddy  arenas  of  English  football.  A 
similar  indolent  and  half -educated  bourgeoisie 
loafed  in  the  imperial  baths  as  attended  Eng- 
lish cricket.  In  the  higher  stage  of  society 
there  was  the  same  revulsion  from  the  old- 
fashioned  virtues  and  an  expressed  contempt 
for  whatever  belonged  to  the  Augustan,  or  in 
the  latter  case  Victorian,  age  in  writing  or 
morals.  London  churches  were  deserted  for 


SOCIETY  IN  DECAY  177 

week-end  parties  exactly  as  the  temples  were 
scorned  by  the  jaded  pleasure-seekers  of  Rome. 
Nobody  in  England  took  the  sovereign's  De- 
fensorship  of  the  faith  more  seriously  than  the 
Romans  took  the  deification  of  their  emperors. 
The  state  religion  in  London  had  a  less  hold 
on  many  than  the  charlatan,  the  theosophist, 
and  the  necromancer,  just  as  Capitoline  Jove 
and  the  matronly  Juno  were  deserted  for  the 
more  exciting  deities  of  the  East.  Society 
women  in  London  exchanged  family  lockets 
for  immodest  charms.  Porte-bonheurs  and 
talismans  of  jade  found  more  sale  than  crosses 
or  "Rizpah"  brooches.  The  frequent  conver- 
sions and  cross-conversions  denoted  an  era  of 
dissolving  rather  than  growing  faith.  I  heard 
of  a  parson  who  became  a  priest  and  then  a 
parson  again,  by  which  time  he  believed  in 
nothing.  He  was  chaplain  to  a  Protestant 
workhouse.  He  told  us  that,  remembering 
that  in  the  presence  of  death  Canon  Law  gave 
him  back  his  privileges,  he  used  to  confess  and 
baptise  dying  paupers  and  pack  them  off 
heavenward  as  good  Catholics  before  they 
knew  where  they  were !  The  dramatic  situa- 
tion was  not  unlike  that  described  in  Balzac's 
Atheist's  Mass.  Neurotic  criminology  attracted 
more  interest  than  unselfish  charity.  The 


178      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

signs  were  present,  even  if  the  decay  was  not 
as  deep  as  German  sociologists  wished  to  be- 
lieve. War  instantly  restored  the  old  stoical 
and  patriotic  virtues. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  gauge  any  society  at 
any  given  tune.  But  its  soundness  or  decay 
may  be  tested  by  its  view  of  morality,  its 
practice  of  humour,  and  its  attitude  toward 
woman  (who  incidentally  is  the  mixture  of 
morality  and  humour).  The  Anglo-Saxon 
treatment  of  women  is  considered  highly 
chivalrous  by  Anglo-Saxons,  but  supremely 
ridiculous  by  Latins.  In  Latin  countries 
women  have  little  legal  right,  but  they  enjoy 
(from  their  point  of  view)  the  best  husbands — 
at  least  husbands  who  are  less  family  men 
than  romantic  lovers.  The  position  of  women 
in  England  is  based  partly  on  legal  rights  and 
partly  on  the  unwritten  law.  The  dual  posi- 
tion has  produced  confusion,  irritation,  and 
suffragism. 

In  America  (the  country  where  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  loses  his  sense  of  compromise)  the 
woman  is  a  man's  legal,  in  some  places  his 
electoral,  equal.  As  a  result  Americans  may 
be  more  moral  husbands  than  Latins,  but 
they  are  disappointing  to  the  wives  whom  they 
treat  as  beautiful  housekeepers  to  await  their 


SOCIETY  IN  DECAY  179 

evening  return  from  business  with  diamond 
tiaras  for  lace  caps.  This  is,  perhaps,  the 
psychological  reason  why  American  women 
marry  foreigners,  though  the  native  man  is  a 
cleaner  and  more  generous  type.  A  Latin 
considers  that  to  leave  a  wife  alone  all  day 
is  equivalent  to  desertion.  There  is  a  differ- 
ence again  between  the  Latin  cavalier  and  the 
Anglo-Saxon  gentleman.  The  latter  treats 
all  women  as  virtuous  until  they  plainly  de- 
clare the  contrary.  The  former  looks  upon 
every  woman  as  a  possible  source  of  romance 
until  she  closes  his  hopes.  The  sexual  polite- 
ness of  Latins  is  most  apparent  in  the  drawing- 
room.  A  sinking  liner  is  the  proper  back- 
ground for  the  more  stolid  chivalry  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon.  Latins  often  taunt  Englishmen 
that  they  show  the  same  pride  and  fondness  to- 
ward their  wives  as  for  their  horses.  "Fine" 
is  a  word  they  apply  exactly  to  both. 

In  its  clumsy  and  illogical  way  English 
morality  has  held  together.  It  is  often  loose 
but  seldom  decadent.  The  British  matron  is 
righteous,  and  the  general  run  of  Englishmen 
are  bored  if  not  contemptuous  at  the  vices 
of  abroad.  An  easy-going  virtue  cements 
more  English  marriages  than  the  subtler  emo- 
tions could.  Even  American  wives  brought 


180      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

less  romance  than  emancipation  into  Eng- 
land. 

American  women  have  played  a  brilliant 
and  eugenic  part  in  modern  society.  They 
have  restored  many  of  the  old  English  virtues 
which  seemed  at  one  time  likely  to  survive 
only  with  the  middle  class.  They  have  made 
some  counterpart  against  the  more  foreign 
admixture  which  has  entered  London.  The 
Americans  taught  tact  and  learned  reverence  of 
Englishwomen.  The  quickest  instance  of  tact 
I  ever  saw  in  an  American  hostess  was  in  a 
church.  She  was  entertaining  a  member  of  the 
royal  family  in  a  back-country  district.  The 
plate  was  handed  round  at  collection  and  roy- 
alty carelessly  dropped  silver.  Quick  as  light- 
ning the  hostess  covered  it  with  gold.  Each 
vestryman  was  asked  by  his  wife  what  the 
visitor  had  given  and  royal  munificence  has 
been  a  byword  in  those  parts  ever  since ! 

English  morality  is  inscrutable  and  illogical. 
Magna  Charta  apparently  allows  a  man  to 
parade  the  worst  woman  in  London  at  a 
watering-place,  but  the  local  by-laws  forbid 
a  boy  bathing  with  his  mother.  Society  is 
weird  in  its  acceptances  and  exclusions.  The 
most  bankrupt  and  disreputable  peer  passes 
as  a  decayed  gentleman,  but  a  nobleman  who 


SOCIETY  IN  DECAY  181 

has  cheated  at  cards  enters  the  class  that 
Orientals  call  "the  untouchables."  The  most 
famous  of  society  card  cheaters  was  none  the 
less  tabooed,  though  it  appeared  he  had  cheated 
in  order  to  support  an  aged  mother!  An  act 
which  seems  as  pardonable  as  that  of  the  fash- 
ionable lady  who  forged  her  husband's  check 
to  subscribe  to  a  cathedral.  The  unpleasant 
obverse  of  all  British  morality  is  the  national 
hypocrisy,  the  "ostrich"  policy  of  burying 
the  head  rather  than  face  moral  problems. 
The  ostrich  feathers  in  the  Prince  of  Wales's 
crest  are  a  national  symbol.  The  English 
nation  will  not  allow  a  spade  to  be  called  a 
spade,  or  else  they  will  insist  on  a  charitable 
supposition  that  it  is  a  shovel.  In  England 
a  man  may  live  with  whom  he  will,  provided 
only  England  never  knows.  Parnell  was  no 
degenerate,  but  he  married  his  mistress  (which 
is  more  than  most  Englishmen  would  have 
grace  to  do).  Sir  George  Lewis,  his  lawyer, 
urged  him  to  contest  the  divorce  suit  against 
O'Shea,  as  he  believed  it  could  not  be  pressed 
after  cross-examination.  Parnell's  only  an- 
swer, as  I  learned  from  Lady  Lewis,  was: 
"My  first  duty  is  to  the  lady."  It  may  be 
said  that  he  sacrificed  his  public  to  his  pri- 
vate honour. 


182      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Sir  George  Lewis  had,  perhaps,  the  best 
knowledge  of  English  society  that  was  pos- 
sible to  a  clever  and  experienced  lawyer. 
He  kept  a  central  clearing-house  for  family 
scandals  and  skeletons,  and  could  cancel  one 
against  the  other  with  calculated  precision. 
It  is  difficult  not  to  believe  that  necessity 
will  arise  for  his  professional  services  on  the 
Day  of  Judgment.  One  of  his  acts  was  of 
rare  generosity.  He  was  opposed  to  Dilke  on 
the  occasion  of  his  divorce  trial,  but  offered 
him  as  good  advice  as  he  later  offered  Parnell. 
Perceiving  there  was  no  damning  question 
they  could  really  ask  him,  he  advised  him  pri- 
vately to  enter  the  witness-box  rather  than 
allow  a  great  career  to  be  ruined.  Unfortu- 
nately Dilke  took  other  advice. 

The  two  most  promising  careers  in  English 
and  Irish  politics  were  sacrificed  at  their 
zenith,  owing  to  the  moral  sense  of  English 
dissenters,  and  with  political  results  extending 
far  further  than  the  two  principals. 

It  is  curious,  though  idle,  to  try  to  inquire 
what  the  effect  of  these  causes  celebres  had 
upon  history.  If  Parnell  had  remained  chair- 
man of  the  Irish  party,  Home  Rule  would  have 
probably  been  passed  in  1894,  and  England 
would  not  have  been  threatened  by  an  Irish 


SOCIETY  IN  DECAY  183 

civil  war  twenty  years  later,  when  she  needed 
all  her  wits  to  face  the  menace  of  Germany. 

If  Dilke  had  succeeded  Gladstone  as  his 
party  had  hoped,  and  occupied  Asquith's 
shoes  until  his  death  in  1909,  it  is  possible 
that  Germany  might  have  had  reasons  to  re- 
consider her  decision  in  1914.  Though  Dilke 
was  a  red  Radical  and  a  personal  friend  of 
Gambetta,  he  wrote  text-books  on  The  Brit- 
ish Army  and  Greater  Britain,  both  of  them 
subjects  removed  from  the  Liberal  mind.  He 
might  have  made  England  readier  for  war. 
Gambetta  had  no  doubt  influenced  him  with 
the  experiences  of  France. 

Forms  of  humour  are  a  subtle  medium  for 
testing  a  human  society.  To  tell  a  nation's 
jokes  is  to  tell  its  moral  code.  Humour  is 
the  element  which  is  most  quickly  irradiated 
or  corroded  by  the  surrounding  age.  The 
humour  of  the  later  Roman  Empire  or  the 
second  French  Empire  was  a  sign-post  of 
decadence.  English  humour  still  spells  rowdi- 
ness  rather  than  riot.  The  practical  joke  was 
always  a  Teutonic  institution.  The  Latin 
jests  with  his  curling  lips,  the  Anglo-Saxon 
by  clumsy  horse-play. 

It  is  true  that  the  finer  wit  of  the  eighteenth 
century  has  disappeared  from  London  with  the 


184      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

old-fashioned  wines.  Gossip  and  sparkling 
cheapness  have  taken  its  place.  Mrs.  Robert 
Crawshay  remains  the  only  wit  whose  bons 
mots  would  have  been  considered  classical  in 
the  days  of  Curran  and  Sheridan.  Her  famous 
description  of  the  last  and  talkative  Lord 
Erne  and  his  well-chiselled  lady  was  taken 
from  one  line  in  Gray's  Elegy: 

"  Storied  Urn  and  animated  bust." 

When  Chamberlain  introduced  tariff  reform, 
she  asked  Mr.  Balfour  if  "England  expects 
every  man  to  pay  her  duty?" 

The  last  parliamentary  mot  in  the  old  style 
was  made  by  Lord  Hugh  Cecil.  He  was  told 
to  expect  a  challenge  to  duel  after  his  attack 
on  Brodrick's  management  of  the  War  Office. 

"I  should  win,"  he  answered  with  equa- 
nimity. "Brodrick  is  sure  to  use  an  obsolete 
weapon!" 

The  first  hint  of  the  coming  of  the  war 
spread  in  some  circles  by  a  jest.  Somebody 
inquired  if  the  diplomatists  in  London  looked 
so  dogged  as  rumours  said.  Worse,  was  the 
reply,  the  Russian  ambassador  has  got  his 
Dogger  look!  It  will  be  remembered  that  he 
staved  off  war  on  the  Dogger  Bank  incident 
after  a  terrible  strain. 


SOCIETY  IN  DECAY  185 

Unfortunately  the  lowest  and  most  ungen- 
erous forms  of  abuse  now  prevail  in  a  House, 
where  'tis  folly  to  be  either  witty  or  wise. 
The  expressions  and  monosyllables  which  the 
national  representatives  bandy  may  be  collated 
to  any  extent  among  the  wits  of  Whitechapel 
and  Limehouse. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  never  was  any 
native  English  wit.  It  was  largely  imported 
by  Irishmen.  The  practical  joke  was  the 
English  form  of  humour — concrete  and  clumsy 
if  not  coarse.  English  memoirs  record  many 
of  these  heavy  pleasantries  in  the  place  where 
French  writers  embalm  examples  of  the  na- 
tional gift  for  the  glittering  phrase. 

Theodore  Hook  (Disraeli's  Stanislaus  Hoax) 
was  the  epitome  of  English  humour.  His 
ventures  in  bon  mot  were  childishly  ridiculous, 
but  his  Berner's  Street  hoax  held  up  the  traffic 
of  London. 

It  is  difficult  not  to  mention  a  remarkable 
practical  joker  who  added  so  much  to  the 
humour  of  the  forgotten  days  of  King  Ed- 
ward VII.  J.  J.  Cole  was  a  contemporary  of 
mine  at  Cambridge.  I  was  fortunate  enough 
to  witness  the  famous  visit  he  paid  in  1905 
to  the  University,  of  which  he  was  a  student, 
disguised  as  the  Sultan  of  Zanzibar.  Accom- 


186      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

panied  by  a  suite  selected  among  his  friends, 
he  was  driven  in  the  mayor's  carriage  to  view 
the  familiar  sights.  His  next  feat  was  to 
emulate  Koepenick  and  inspect  a  British 
battleship  disguised  as  a  foreign  prince,  and 
to  distribute  decorations  to  the  simple-minded 
sailors — (who,  however,  caught  and  caned 
him  long  afterward).  He  was  last  heard  of  as 
the  guest  of  the  Irish  viceroy  in  Dublin,  where 
I  believe  he  tested  the  local  detective  force 
by  simulating  an  attack  on  the  viceroy,  and 
waiting,  watch  in  hand,  for  the  members  of 
the  secret  service  to  arrive,  too  late  to  be  of 
any  assistance ! 

On  the  whole,  English  humour  and  English 
morality  have  broadened  but  not  decayed. 
Rottenness  and  deterioration  have  fastened 
upon  sections  of  English  society,  but  wholesale 
decadence  is  not  there.  The  war  has  purged 
away  much  dross  and  allowed  some  of  the 
original  metal  to  come  to  the  surface.  But 
new  metals  and  new  moulds  will  be  needed  in 
the  period  after  the  war. 


POST-VICTORIANISM 

EDWARD  VII  led  his  subjects  in  their  natural 
desire  to  set  aside  Victorian  things.  For 
years  he  had  chafed  under  the  strict  surveil- 
lance imposed  by  the  Prince  Consort.  A  re- 
action was  the  result,  and  as  Prince  of  Wales 
he  found  his  friends  elsewhere  than  at  court, 
and  his  interests  in  other  capitals  than  his 
mother's.  The  humiliating  and  dependent 
position  in  which  the  Queen  retained  him 
made  him  the  first  Englishman  to  break  with 
Victorianism.  He  shocked  Victoria's  subjects, 
as  he  afterward  delighted  his  own.  In  his 
reign  everybody  was  anxious  to  be  different 
from  their  Victorian  grandparents.  The  Vic- 
torian attitude  had  upheld  all  conventions, 
literary,  political,  or  religious.  Enthusiasm 
for  the  new  or  scepticism  of  the  old  had  been 
regarded  as  too  American  or  too  French. 
The  Oxford  movement  which  might  have 
developed  a  national  religion  was  embittered 
to  take  refuge  in  the  arms  of  Rome.  The 
aesthetic  movement  which  might  have  led 
vto  a  national  art  was  ridiculed  into  preciosity 

187 


188      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

and  early  decadence.  The  Victorians  laughed 
at  their  prophets. 

But  in  the  reigns  of  Edward  and  George 
new  movements  were  taken  up  with  such 
speed  and  enthusiasm  that  they  were  liable 
to  dissipate  into  thin  absurdity  of  themselves. 
Everybody  set  out  to  break  rules  and  sup- 
plant conventions.  The  latest  "craze"  or 
"rage"  superseded  the  old  staple  diet.  There 
was  an  unholy  cry  for  strange  meats.  The  at- 
mosphere was  agitated  by  crank  artists  and 
preposterous  poseurs,  and  became  hectic  and 
unbalanced.  Patriotism  came  to  be  regarded 
as  old-fashioned  and  morality  as  stupid.  To 
be  serious  was  a  social  defect.  Even  society's 
sinners  were  not  serious  enough  to  be  really 
bad.  People  were  willing  to  forego  their  sin- 
ning, provided  they  were  not  mistaken  for 
good.  Young  men  who  in  a  sterner  age  would 
have  enjoyed  being  taken  for  arctic  explorers 
preferred  being  suspected  of  decadence.  Quite 
bourgeois  people,  without  the  ability  or  oc- 
casions to  be  fast,  simulated  moral  speed. 
Doubtless  there  were  psychological  thrills, 
and  the  old  Victorian  blood  cried  to  Heaven 
and  Hell  for  thrills.  Society  indulged  in  what 
theologians  call  the  sins  of  association. 

In  literature  Browning  and  Tennyson  were 


POST-VICTORIANISM  189 

dismissed  as  grandmotherly.  The  latter  was 
sent  to  Coventry  and  the  former  to  Boston. 
Swinburne  was  hailed  as  the  only  poet  of  his 
era,  about  twenty  years  after  he  had  ceased 
to  write  good  poetry.  It  was  discovered  that 
the  "yellow"  nineties  had  been  the  only 
artistic  decade  of  the  previous  century.  A 
feverish  rechauffe  of  Wilde,  Beardsley,  and 
Pater  followed.  A  post- Victorian  literature 
was  not  long  in  starting  on  its  own  account 
with  flashiness  for  its  hall-mark  and  paradox 
as  the  test  of  its  sterling.  Literary  values  be- 
came entirely  superficial.  The  glitter  without 
the  weight  of  gold  was  accepted  and  honoured. 
English  literature  passed  from  an  Augustan 
age  straight  to  that  of  brass.  There  was  no 
intermediary  age  of  silver. 
'  Commencement-de-siecle  writers  arose  as  bril- 
liant and  soundful  as  brass,  who  insisted 
on  writing  against  time,  though  they  had  a 
fresh  century  ahead  of  them.  They  seemed 
to  share  a  consciousness  with  Edward  Rex 
that  their  day  was  short — as  though  some 
early  cataclysm  threatened  to  make  an  end 
of  them  and  of  all  their  works.  As  a  result, 
there  was  little  scientific  or  philosophic  writ- 
ing. The  three-volumed  novel  was  succeeded 
by  the  six-penny  one.  Writers  learned  to 


190      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

heighten  and  intensify  the  produce  of  the 
moment.  The  ablest  and  most  distinct  of 
Edwardian  writers  was  Chesterton.  He  wrote 
like  some  Dr.  Johnson  condemned  to  set  forth 
the  coils  of  his  expression  by  cable  code.  As 
a  result,  he  substituted  the  paradox  for  the 
period.  In  a  literary  tour  de  force  he  defended 
orthodoxy  by  writing  a  book  about  Heretics, 
and  he  exactly  hit  his  age  in  laying  down 
"the  golden  rule  that  there  is  no  golden  rule." 
Very  exactly  also  he  probed  the  thought  of 
all  contemporary  writing  in  the  choice  saying: 
"Everything  matters  except  everything."  He 
perfected  the  game  of  literary  "reversi"  in 
which  pieces  that  were  red  one  moment  are 
seen  to  be  green  the  next.  An  irritating  but 
scintillant  style.  Smilingly  he  stood  Truth 
upon  her  head  to  explain  the  Universal  An- 
tipodes in  which  we  all  have  our  being. 

Chesterton  had  serious  motives  behind  his 
paradoxes,  but  others  were  sensational  for 
sensation's  sake.  Bernard  Shaw  may  have 
had  an  artistic  and  a  dramatic  message  to 
deliver,  but  he  could  not  forego  the  cheapest 
advertisement  of  the  prophet.  It  was  not 
until  after  the  death  of  Victoria  that  Shaw 
could  be  appreciated  or  tolerated.  Though 
in  France  he  would  only  have  been  considered 


POST-VICTORIANISM  191 

an  outmoded  Voltairian,  he  passed  in  Eng- 
land for  the  apogee  of  human  daring  and 
originality.  The  vogue  endured  until  the 
futurists  swept  into  undisputed  mastery  of 
the  powers  of  topsyturvydom.  Nevertheless, 
both  Shaw  and  Chesterton  had  sane  lessons 
to  teach  the  Victorian.  The  futurist  only 
wished  to  destroy  him  and  as  a  preliminary 
to  drive  him  mad. 

The  influences  which  corroded  literature 
worked  with  tenfold  corruption  through  the 
press.  The  Daily  Mail,  ochre  offspring  of 
the  yellow  nineties,  reached  its  zenith  in  Ed- 
wardian days,  when  its  proprietor  became 
proprietor  of  the  Times.  Harmsworth  showed 
himself  a  transatlantic  Hearst,  but  he  secured 
prestige  and  immunity  by  supporting  the 
side  of  reaction  in  politics.  Hailed  as  a  paper 
Napoleon,  he  chose  the  title  of  Northcliffe, 
enabling  him  to  copy  the  Napoleonic  initial 
in  his  signature.  Under  his  aegis  rose  a  school 
of  journalists,  each  of  whom  carried  an  editor's 
pen  in  his  knapsack.  Journalism  and  litera- 
ture became  as  indistinguishable  as  republi- 
canism and  Empery  under  Napoleon. 

The  infection  of  sensationalism  spread  to 
the  pulpit.  The  Bishop  of  London  used 
flashy  novels,  like  When  It  Was  Dark,  as  the 


192      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

subject  of  sermons  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral. 
Dissenting  preachers  developed  a  church  slang 
and  even  called  on  their  hearers  to  stand  by 
the  old  firm,  "God  and  Son" !  Only  the  shop- 
keeping  soul  could  ever  have  conceived  the 
Trinity  under  such  a  figure.  The  Catholic 
pulpit  was  liable  to  the  same  necessity.  Only 
by  sensation  apparently  could  credence  be 
attracted.  Father  Vaughan,  decrying  the  Sins 
of  Society  to  audiences,  which  were  neither 
sinners  nor  society,  was  in  symbolic  relations 
with  his  times. 

The  novelists  followed  on  the  same  track. 
A  bright  mildew  pervaded  their  pages.  Their 
Victorian  fathers  had  eaten  sour  grapes  in 
the  garden  of  Mrs.  Grundy  and  the  children's 
teeth  were  set  on  edge.  There  was  a  cry  for 
something  wilder  than  Scott,  for  something 
more  gloomy  than  the  Brontes,  for  something 
more  sexual  than  George  Eliot.  Dickens  and 
Miss  Austen  were  as  forgotten  as  the  Penta- 
teuch. Even  novelists  who  had  begun  writ- 
ing in  the  Victorian  age  developed  new  and 
unexpected  methods.  Wells  poured  the  labora- 
tory, and  George  Moore  the  lavatory,  into 
their  books.  Wells  became  the  chemical  and 
mechanised  romanticist  of  his  time.  An  inter- 
est in  science  served  him  and  his  readers  in 


POST-VICTORIANISM  193 

place  of  a  love  of  chivalry.  There  arose  a  cry 
for  the  future  instead  of  the  past. 

George  Moore  was  a  French  writer  of  the 
naturalist  school  writing  in  English.  His 
novels  were  as  great  a  tour  de  force  as  though 
a  Greek  erotic  writer  endeavoured  to  express 
himself  in  clumsy  Latin.  Of  their  school, 
Evelyn  Innes  and  Sister  Teresa  are  not  likely 
to  be  replaced  in  English.  It  was  typical  of 
the  Victorian  and  post- Victorian  ages  that  up 
to  1900  everybody  pretended  they  had  not 
read  George  Moore,  while  under  King  Edward 
they  pretended  they  had.  After  interesting 
himself  in  the  Gaelic  movement  Moore  pro- 
duced a  trilogy  of  novels  which  had  the  ironic 
result  of  immortalising  the  revivalists  of  Irish 
letters  in  the  English  literature  they  once 
had  hopes  of  supplanting.  He  sketched  the 
portraits  of  his  familiar  friends  with  an  un- 
abashed pen.  A.  E.,  Douglas  Hyde,  Lady 
Gregory,  Edward  Martyn,  and  Yeats  live  with 
all  their  idiosyncrasies  in  his  pages.  Since 
Boswell  jotted  Johnson  there  has  been  no  such 
photography. 

Even  the  Catholic  novelist  Hugh  Benson 
could  not  help  exhibiting  the  contemporary 
symptoms.  He  wrote  fascinating  novels  in  the 
nature  of  propaganda.  He  burned  flash-lights 


194      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

before  the  altars  of  Rome.  He  once  confided 
to  me  that  his  novel  The  Conventionalists  was 
written  to  madden  the  critics.  He  had  just 
converted  a  clever  contemporary  of  mine  at 
Cambridge  by  a  process  of  exciting  mysticism. 
That  process  he  elaborated  in  his  next  novel, 
The  Conventionalists.  Not  content  with  sketch- 
ing his  penitent,  he  leaped  into  his  own  pages 
under  his  own  name  and  triumphantly  con- 
verted his  hero  over  again !  He  mingled  mys- 
ticism and  wove  the  tags  of  theology  into  his 
novels  exactly  as  Wells  transferred  the  sweep- 
ings of  science  to  his. 

The  post- Victorian  concert  was  a  mad  one 
while  it  lasted.  In  the  midst  Bernard  Shaw 
sang  solos  in  minor  blasphemy,  while  Chester- 
ton wrung  fantastic  fugues  from  a  Gothic 
organ.  The  notes  sounded  by  others  were 
too  superficial  to  need  criticism,  but  their  in- 
spiration was  typified  by  the  sensation-seeker 
who  noted  in  the  account  he  wrote  of  himself 
in  a  Who's  Who — "married — (for  money).*' 
If  readers  remained  sane  it  was  because  they  no 
more  took  literature  seriously  than  the  writers 
thereof.  Eventually,  perhaps,  they  came  to 
share  Chesterton's  "insane  dread  of  insanity." 
They  needed  rest  more  than  change,  and  it 
must  be  confessed  that  it  was  out  of  sheer 


POST-VICTORIANISM  195 

vertigo  that  Kipling,  Chesterton,  and  Belloc 
began  to  hymn  such  English  simplicities  as 
Sussex,  Beer,  and  Chalk. 

Outside  the  circle  of  a  literature  which, 
however  disfigured  by  cleverness,  was  seldom 
offensive,  a  thoroughly  unpleasant  output  of 
memoirs  marked  the  taste  of  the  age.  Egre- 
gious personalities  masqueraded  as  reminis- 
cences. Heading  the  charge  of  "light"  litera- 
ture, Lady  Cardigan  achieved  the  Balaclava 
of  scurrility.  The  type  of  author  known  as 
the  literary  ghost  (or  ghoul)  appeared  and 
compiled  the  recollections  of  the  Crown  Prin- 
cess of  Saxony  and  Countess  Larisch.  The 
sale  for  such  works  multiplied.  During  the 
last  few  weeks  before  the  war  the  public  were 
admitted  to  Lord  Alfred  Douglas's  confidences 
on  Oscar  Wilde  and  to  Mrs.  Parnell's  inti- 
macies with  the  dead  Irish  leader.  It  was,  per- 
haps, time  that  Thor  came  knocking  upon  the 
gates. 

The  same  portents  were  visible  in  politics 
as  in  literature.  Chivalry,  restraint,  and  de- 
corum, whatever  their  demerits,  took  a  back 
place.  The  House  of  Commons  took  its  tone 
from  the  new  Labour  party.  Acrimonious  and 
senseless  revilings  took  the  place  of  argument 
on  both  sides.  The  younger  men  who  at- 


196      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

tained  prominence  were  advanced  for  their 
glib  smartness.  Mr.  F.  E.  Smith  rose  to  the 
forefront  of  the  Tory  party  after  a  single 
speech  of  overcharged  epigram.  It  was  re- 
marked that  in  earlier  days  he  would  only 
have  qualified  to  be  Disraeli's  secretary.  An- 
other career  which  would  have  been  impossible 
in  Victorian  days  was  that  of  Horatio  Bot- 
tomley.  He  may  be  summarised  as  a  modern 
Socrates,  "the  gadfly  of  the  state,"  but  a 
Socrates  who  has  taken  to  journalism.  His 
criticisms  were  not  scurrilous  or  delivered 
below  the  belt,  but  his  sheet  John  Bull  be- 
came endeared  to  the  public  for  sensation's 
sake.  There  is  a  sensationalism  of  morality 
as  well  as  of  vice. 

The  last  few  months  of  politics  and  political 
gossip  before  the  war  broke  out  were  sad  and 
ignominious  to  recall.  Stagnation,  suspicion, 
and  slander  combined  to  poison  the  atmos- 
phere. Never  were  dissensions  in  English 
life  so  acrimonious  or  tongues  so  malicious. 
Mr.  Asquith's  salary  would  not  have  paid 
the  duty  on  all  the  wine  Tory  hostesses  in- 
sisted he  was  drinking.  Chief  Justice  Isaacs 
was  accused  of  financial  sharping,  and  Winston 
Churchill  of  organising  a  cold-blooded  pogrom 
in  Ulster.  The  extremes  of  bitterness  and 


POST-VICTORIANISM  197 

fabrication  were  reached  in  reference  to  naval 
questions.  Lords  of  Admiralty  were  arraigned 
as  traitors  or  Cingalees !  The  latter  incred- 
ible assertion  was  hurled  by  opponents  at 
Lord  Fisher,  who  certainly  began  life  as  he 
is  ending  it — a  very  stolid  and  pugnacious 
Englishman. 

Of  the  protagonists  in  the  naval  debates 
Admiral  Beresford  was  my  father's  cousin, 
and  Winston  Churchill  was  my  own,  and  I 
must  admit  that  the  blows  and  counterblows 
which  they  exchanged  were  manly  and  above 
the  belt.  Amid  a  crowd  of  sneaking  partisans 
they  fought  disinterestedly  for  what  each 
believed  to  be  the  best  for  the  Navy.  When 
the  war  broke  out  I  was  gratified  to  hear 
Beresford  say  that  England  could  never  be 
sufficiently  grateful  for  what  Winston  had 
done  in  mobilising  the  fleet,  while  Winston  ad- 
mitted in  a  characteristic  burst  of  generosity 
that  the  Admiralty  had  profited  from  Beres- 
ford's  previous  criticism. 

With  the  single  exception  of  the  Admiralty, 
the  English  social  machine  politically,  edu- 
cationally, and  even  morally  was  unprepared 
and  reluctant  for  war.  The  Empire  as  a  whole 
had  sat  down  to  rest  upon  her  laurels.  Her 
expansion  was  at  an  end.  She  tipped  from 


198      THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

Lhasa  to  Alaska — from  Cairo  to  Cape — from 
Victoria  Nyanza  to  King  Edward  VII's  land. 
"Thinking  imperially"  showed  signs  of  ex- 
haustion. Energy  and  discussion  were  con- 
centrated on  domestic  affairs,  Home  Rule, 
Disestablishment,  the  House  of  Lords.  The 
maelstrom  of  politics  became  more  and  more 
agitated.  England  staggered  in  the  transition 
stage  between  the  old-fashioned  and  limited 
rule  of  her  political  aristocrats  to  the  un- 
limited supremacy  of  social  democrats.  The 
cabinet  showed  transitional  symptoms.  It 
contained  a  farrago  of  Whigs,  Liberals,  and 
Socialists  endeavouring  to  be  progressive  in 
harmony.  Within  five  years  Lloyd  George 
changed  English  life — whether  for  good  or  for 
bad  historians  will  have  to  probe  far-reaching 
results  to  decide.  As  far  as  national  balance 
and  efficiency  were  concerned,  Lloyd  George 
came  either  too  soon  or  too  late.  The  war 
found  the  scales  between  the  classes  and 
masses  not  only  unadjusted  but  in  dangerous 
agitation.  The  atmosphere  was  rent  with 
their  violent  dissensions  and  the  streets  were 
filled  with  trampled  suffragettes.  Ireland  was 
tossed  in  the  brew  of  civil  war  and  Wales 
became  a  sectarian  cockpit.  In  England  the 
menace  of  trade-unions  overshadowed  even 


POST-VICTORIANISM  199 

the  question  of  lords  and  education — both 
subjects  of  unrelenting  hostilities. 

The  government  maintained  its  hold  on 
power  by  filling  up  the  gaping  chinks  between 
the  social  strata  with  German  patchwork. 
In  quick  succession  they  borrowed  the  systems 
of  labour  exchange  and  old-age  pension  from 
beyond  the  Rhine.  Haldane  even  introduced 
some  elements  of  Prussian  organisation  into 
a  bewildered  and  protesting  War  Office. 

It  was  curious  to  the  impartial  observer  to 
note  how  much  was  being  borrowed  from 
Germany  at  this  tune.  Doctors  borrowed  their 
drugs,  scholars  their  texts,  labourites  their 
doctrines,  the  cabinet  their  schemes,  church- 
men their  higher  criticism,  and,  most  unlikely 
of  all,  Gaelic  revivalists  obtained  their  Celtic 
grammars  from  the  same  source  of  since- 
repudiated  culture. 

As  the  fatal  hour  of  destiny  drew  near, 
shriller  grew  the  cries  and  more  blinded  the  in- 
fatuation of  the  politicians.  The  diplomatists 
prophesied  smooth  things  with  exceptions  like 
Sir  Louis  Mallet,  and  even  had  they  foretold 
dangers  nobody  at  home  was  in  a  mood  to 
listen.  Sir  Louis  Mallet  missed  a  merited 
position  in  the  Foreign  Office  because  of  his 
anti-German  tendencies.  He  was  sent  to 


200      THE  END  OF  A   CHAPTER 

watch  the  "Great  German  Myth"  in  Turkey, 
whence  he  returned  with  the  melancholy  satis- 
faction of  having  been  right.  Even  the  state 
Church  reverberated  to  the  Gilbertian  atmos- 
phere. The  world  crisis  found  Anglicanism 
cloven  between  the  rival  claims  of  the  Bishops 
of  Uganda  and  Zanzibar,  who  had  collided  in 
the  African  mission  field,  as  to  whether  their 
amazed  converts  were  Catholics  or  Protes- 
tants. If  they  were  Protestants,  Dissenters 
could  join  them  at  Communion  according 
to  Uganda.  But  Zanzibar  as  a  Catholic 
Bishop  protested.  The  Kikuyu  question,  as  it 
was  called,  was  referred  to  the  worthy  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  who  decided  ex  cathedra 
that  the  Communion  of  Dissenters  was  pleas- 
ing to  God,  but  they  must  not  come  again! 
Whereat  one  archangel  retired  behind  a  cloud, 
and  two  cherubs  at  least  were  admonished  for 
laughing. 

July,  1914,  found  political  and  ecclesiastical 
feud  and  unrest  at  summer  heat.  They  were 
hectic  and  curious  days  to  remember  now. 
Days  which  have  seemed  since  to  be  further 
removed  than  the  days  of  George  IV,  for 
English  chronology  is  now  dated  ante-bellum 
and  post-bellum.  An  era  has  passed.  The 
days  of  petty  strifes  at  home  were  followed 


POST-VICTORIANISM  201 

by  the  days  of  universal  war  abroad.  People 
have  forgotten  the  days  when  high  dames  left 
the  room  rather  than  meet  the  premier's  family 
— the  days  of  the  Russian  ballet  and  the  tango 
— the  days  when  suffragettes  were  raided  in 
London  and  guns  run  to  Ireland.  The  days 
when  expectant  Liberals  awaited  "Lang  to 
mould  the  church  and  Haldane  stamp  the 
state." 

Society  in  London  danced  madly  during 
those  last  months,  as  society  had  danced  in 
Paris  toward  the  close  of  the  Second  Empire. 
The  tango  was  in  the  ascendant.  Sophie 
Chotec  (the  Archduchess  of  Austria)  had  come 
to  London  to  be  initiated  in  its  variants.  For 
her  as  for  society  it  was  to  be  a  prelude  to 
the  dance  of  death.  Even  her  tragic  assas- 
sination with  her  husband  in  June  sounded 
no  warning.  The  whirl  of  infectious  riot  con- 
tinued. People  dared  life  and  death.  A 
wild  woman  had  pulled  down  the  King's 
horse  running  in  the  Derby  of  1913.  A  year 
later  a  young  baronet  threw  himself  after  mid- 
night from  a  festive  launch  into  the  Thames 
to  interest  a  jaded  supper  party,  and  was 
drowned.  It  seemed  as  though  the  exuberance 
of  the  Irishman  who  felt  "blue-mouldy  for 
need  of  a  beating"  had  seized  upon  all.  Yet 


202     THE  END  OF  A  CHAPTER 

in  their  prophetic  souls  people  felt  something, 
some  worthy  crisis,  some  invigorating  trouble 
was  bound  to  come.  Everything  pointed  at 
one  time  to  civil  war  in  Ireland,  and  men 
braced  themselves  for  a  struggle.  Suddenly 
above  the  cries  in  the  street,  above  the  do- 
mestic brawls,  sounded  the  clear  challenge  of 
Germany  overseas.  With  no  uncertain  sound 
the  hammer  of  Thor  beat  upon  the  gates  of 
Empire ! 

After  all  that  had  passed  or  was  passing, 
it  was  as  refreshing  as  going  out  after  a  scrap 
with  domestics  to  listen  to  the  thunderous 
skies  gathering  for  a  deluge.  In  a  moment 
of  time  all  the  troubles  and  worries  and  threat- 
enings  of  politics  became  antediluvian,  and  the 
nation  stepped  down  to  do  battle  with  the 
cleansing  flood ! 


EPILOGUE 

THE  ominous  calm  and  the  paralysing  uncer- 
tainties of  July  had  passed  for  ever.  Few 
troops  were  seen  to  move,  and  no  crowds 
swayed  through  the  streets.  The  symptoms 
without  the  signs  of  war  marked  the  first 
days  of  August. 

But  a  strange  sight  met  the  eyes  of  those 
whom   chance   had  placed   in   a  position   to 
see — men  on  Irish  trawlers  gun-running  toward 
Ulster — fishermen  in  smacks  off  Devon  ar^ 
off  Grimsby — coast  watchers  upon  the  chall 
headlands — casual  holiday-makers   on  Susst 
coasts  or  on  Norfolk  broads.    These  men  sa^ 
the  wonders  of  Empire,  and  the  grey  smok 
curling  upon  the  grey  horizons,  and  the  grej 
sinewy   ships   that   slipped   through   daylight 
into  dusk — and  were  no  more  seen. 

For  moments  only  these  shapes  were  visible 
before  they  disappeared  into  the  wastes  of 
the  North  Sea.  Not  a  shot  was  fired,  and  no 
historic  pennant  was  flown.  Like  a  phantasm 
of  clouds  they  passed  on  their  way,  but  with 
them  rested  the  keeping  of  the  world. 

The  decisive  stroke  of  the  war  had  been 
struck  before  the  war  began.  Some  one  had 
mobilised  the  fleet 


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